


Being Ordinary

by BethNottingham



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Again not the sexy kind, F/M, Found Family, Friendship, Get that god some therepy, Hurt/Comfort, Loki Needs a Hug, Loki has PTSD, M/M, Multi, Only as storytelling, Slow Burn, TW for mentions of child abuse, Tumblr, and not the sexy kind, memories of turture, mind-control, no really this is heavily influenced by tumblr, not actual scenes or flashbacks, tasertricks - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 51,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22101529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethNottingham/pseuds/BethNottingham
Summary: Loki has faced many challenges in his long life, and always comes out on top. But after being forced to attack the earth and falling before the Avengers, he has a new and unfamiliar set of challenges, including but not limited to staying out of jail, dealing with his new roommate's idiosyncrasies, and regaining his memories of his time with Thanos.Cross posted to fanfiction up to chapter 21
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Loki, Loki & Thor (Marvel), Phil Coulson & Loki
Comments: 12
Kudos: 54





	1. Hello

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! This fic was originally posted to fanfic, so if you're thinking you read it before, you probably have. Additionally it was heavily influenced by years of me reading people's tumblr theories, so if you see something you feel like you read on tumblr, then you probably did!
> 
> The expected number of chapters is based on my current outline, however it's a long story so the exact number may fluctuate as I work on it.

Darcy stood nervously in front of a big, heavy-duty, high-tech, carbon-poly-fiber-steel-something-really-advanced-and-strong-to-the-point-of-overkill door. Of course, considering who was behind that door, maybe it wasn't so much overkill… she gulped. Why had she wanted to do this again?

"Change your mind?" the unsmiling (but hunky) SHIELD agent asked, glowering down at her and taking in her every micro expression.

-0-

" _Excuse me?" Fury responded dryly, turning on his heel to stare down at Darcy with his one eye. Something about his demeanor made her feel like even his eye patch was glaring at her._

" _I'm pursuing a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science, with the intention of attending law school after I complete the program." Darcy explained. "There is an actual current terrorist with multiple intergalactic political entanglements on this base," she continued, gesturing at the floor beneath her feet with her index finger, to indicate their present location, "and I would like to interview him while we have him here, for academic purposes." Jane, Thor and Erik were staring at her in shock—she wasn't sure if it was because they'd never heard her speak so formally before or maybe because she'd just asked to go talk to_ Loki _._

" _It's not like I could do any harm," she continued, pressing her advantage since Fury didn't seem to know what to say to her; she'd spent the three hours she'd been in the SHIELD Triskellion so far making jokes, getting underfoot, bonding with Stark and generally getting on the more professional people's last nerve. Now suddenly she was standing up straight, making good points, and reminding everyone that she, too, had an education. "I don't know the codes to open his cell, I don't have any information that he would find useful, I don't have any SHIELD clearance or anything else that he could exploit. He gains nothing, you lose nothing; I just want to talk to him._

" _Or," she added, quirking an eyebrow, "I could just stay here and keep annoying you. He gains nothing, I gain nothing…" Fury's eye narrowed. Darcy shrugged, knowing from the way he'd shifted in posture that she'd already won._

" _You won't be able to publish anything," he started. She nodded, having anticipated that. "The nondisclosure agreement you signed at the front desk still applies."_

" _Purely academic curiosity," she assured him calmly, surprising those who knew her once again. Fury sighed and rubbed his forehead tiredly._

" _I need some damn coffee… or a stiff drink," he muttered. "Agent Ward, escort miss Lewis to the detention level."_

" _Yes sir," Agent Ward responded uncertainly, leading the way out of Fury's office with a sidelong glance at the student beside him._

-0-

"Nope," Darcy responded resolutely. She'd probably never get this chance again, and she wasn't about to back down just because the door was intimidating her. "Let's do this."

Ward slid a glossy ID card down a slot, and a green light flickered on. Then a blue beam scanned his eye, and he pressed his thumb to a pad below the card slot. Lots of security indeed—although it was appropriate considering that the door was opening to reveal an alien sorcerer who had just tried to level New York and take over the world.

Loki did not react in any way as Darcy and Agent Ward entered the room. He was in a cell about the size of Darcy's apartment bedroom, made of metal bars embedded in a solid sheet of something thick and transparent—glass, plastic, Star Trek transparent aluminum… she wouldn't put the last one past these SHIELD people. Iron Man could probably invent some.

The cell contained a toilet, something that looked like a water fountain or a sink, and a bed that was nothing more than a slab with a folded-up blanket on one end. That was all—except for Loki himself. The alien sat with his back to one of the transparent walls, in profile to the door, legs stretched out in front of him, empty hands in his lap, face unreadable. He didn't so much as twitch when the door noisily opened, and the two pairs of footsteps approached him.

"Well, I'll be outside," Ward announced after critically surveying the cell and checking the readout on a computer screen—most likely displaying the security settings. "I'll be monitoring you, so holler if you need anything."

"Will do, Agent W," Darcy responded casually. Ward fixed Loki with what was probably supposed to be an intimidating glare—which the alien didn't seem to notice-and then left, closing the massive door behind him. When the echo died away, silence reigned. There were no other cells in this block—they were completely alone, except for the cameras. He still hadn't reacted to her presence at all. It was possible he thought she was too far beneath him to warrant noticing, but she imagined it was more likely that he was examining her from a distance, behind the privacy of stillness and indifference since he had no other privacy in that fishbowl cell.

"Hey," she greeted him cordially, walking up to the partition and dragging a wheeled office chair with her, out from behind the computer desk. She situated it about three feet from the cell, and arranged herself comfortably on it. Finally, he moved, turning his head to regard her with a sort of blank disdain.

"What do you want?" he demanded in a low, drawling monotone.

"Well," she said, the skillful lay summary she'd spent the last hour crafting slipping from her mind, "I wanted to talk to you." It was very different to stand in a room full of professional people and spew out logic than it was to sit in a prison asking an intergalactic terrorist for an interview. And it wasn't that she was scared of him—the unhealthy pallor of his bruised and cut face, the exhausted droop of his shoulders, and the dull thousand-yard stare of his eyes made him look thoroughly beaten. No, what made it difficult for her was the interpersonal closeness. Because until she got close, he was "alien" and "terrorist." But now that she had to make eye-contact, he was "Loki," and she wasn't really sure how to deal with that.

He snorted derisively, but without any real strength behind it, and turned his eyes back to the area above his outstretched feet.

"Fury is really reaching, sending _you_ ," he murmured. He thought when she said "talk" she meant an interrogation, she realized with a muted jolt of shock.

"Actually," she responded a little more confidently, "I had to argue my way in here." His forehead twitched into a slight frown, and he glanced at her sidelong, not turning his head.

"I'm a political science student," she continued. "You're in here because you committed an act of political violence. I wanted to interview you. Unless," she added casually, "you have something better to do with your time." This made him turn and appraise her properly—she had a good point and she knew it. He was a genius, well-known for his stellar people-manipulation skills, so he had to be bored out of his skull, locked up in solitary. A week had passed since New York, and if Darcy remembered right, Thor had said it would be another two weeks before conditions were right to use the Tesseract to transport him back to Asgard to be imprisoned there. Apparently there was a certain level of knowing what one was doing necessary for using the cube at will—and Thor did _not_.

"What is it you want to hear, miss…?" Loki asked, surveying her critically.

"Darcy," she responded brightly. "And I guess whatever you have to say. Why earth?" she added, realizing that an interview wasn't going to go anywhere without her asking some questions to get the ball rolling. "Other than the fact that we had the tesseract here—'cause you could've taken it and left. Why us?"

"You've thought about this," he commented lightly. "Maybe I didn't have a reason. Perhaps I'm just pure evil, wanting to destroy everything in my path—you were just the closest species at hand."

"People don't do shit like that without a reason," Darcy responded flatly. "Especially smart people. I'll buy that it's a complicated reason, or maybe not a reasonable reason, but not that there's no reason."

"Hm," he hummed, somewhere between a sigh an a laugh and an exhale. "And I suppose you're 'smart people' too, miss Darcy?" he said in a low, musical hiss, sarcasm and boredom and an echo of false flattery wrapping around his words and dripping from his tongue. Darcy knew she should probably be offended, but getting angry wouldn't get her anywhere, so she did what she always did—she snorted with laughter.

"C'mon, I'm a broke college student with an expulsion record involved in all of this because I work my ass off, _unpaid_ , for six college credits of internship _not_ in my major just to get in better graces with my shithead advisor, currently trying, on a whim, to have a conversation—that I can't record or use in any papers—with an alien terrorist. And I'm not even drunk. That sound smart to you?" she quipped, raising an eyebrow.

"So, this is about improving your academic standing," he murmured, tilting his head back and raising his eyebrows in the "ah-hah" gesture. She snorted again.

"I can't even tell anyone I was in this _building_ ," she responded. "This is about the fact that there's a real live terrorist I can talk to, or I can sit in a boring meeting room full of boring people saying boring things and watch your brother and my boss making mushy goo-goo eyes at each other—and lemmie tell ya, both of those get old _really_ fast."

"He's _not_ my brother," Loki snapped, whipping his head around to glare at her with a ferocity she hadn't expected. "Or hadn't you heard?"

"I know there's drama, and that you were adopted," Darcy admitted. "I'm not sure if Asgard and Earth have the same definitions of 'family' and 'adoption.' But in any case, I kinda' feel like I'm going to catch cooties just being in the same room as him and Jane, now that she's got the whole slapping-him-across-the-face thing out of her system."

"She slapped him?" Loki asked, quirking an eyebrow with a gleam of interest.

"Twice," Darcy responded. "Once for leaving her without explanation and then not coming back for a year, and once cause she was in shock and wanted to make sure he was real." Loki exhaled sharply through his nose—the smallest laugh.

"That must've been a sight," he commented. "Jane's the tiny scientist, is she not?" Darcy nodded.

"She had to stretch up on her tip-toes to reach," Darcy admitted with a grin as she remembered. "The look on Thor's face was priceless—I think he expected her to fling herself into his arms, old-school romance style."

"I can imagine," Loki nodded, almost smirking himself. "I'm guessing Director Fury is similarly unamused by their antics?"

"Oh yeah," Darcy recalled, "he tried to tell them to take it out of his office, but, well, Jane's little and cute but when she's angry she turns into a little concentrated firebolt of rage, and I think he got the idea early on that messing with her would be more trouble than it was worth, y'know?"

"So, that's two of you who've annoyed Fury into submission today," Loki mused. "Is that typical of Midgardian women, or just your particular culture?"

"Uuuum," Darcy started, frowning and thinking. "I guess it's not… _un_ common, at least in the US. I wouldn't know about other countries, though. I'm supposed to take _Gender and History_ next semester… if my advisor doesn't do anything douchey again and make me do another useless internship."

"Caught in the system, are you?" he noted, with less sarcasm—and was that something resembling empathy? It wasn't like he was looking at her sadly and saying "you poor darling!" but he wasn't making fun of her, and that was a step in the right direction.

"Story of my life," Darcy agreed with a humorless laugh. "And it's not like I'm a bad student, either," she continued, gesturing widely with her hands. "I just had too much of a sense of humor at my old school, pushed too many people's buttons. Now the admin at my new school just want to screw me over because I 'must not take my education seriously.' I guess I'm imagining the giant tuition bills I pay every semester, or maybe all that money isn't 'serious' to them." She sighed irritably. "Who knows," she muttered, propping her elbows on her legs and resting her face in her hands, mashing her cheek to the side and pouting.

"Sounds frustrating," Loki observed. "Odd that someone like you, who seems to hold great disdain for authority, would intend to become a lawyer—if I'm not mistaken, the ultimate champion of authority."

"Well, everyone gets screwed by the system, unless they're rich and powerful," Darcy explained, sitting up straight and shrugging. "So I want to be someone who really understands and can _use_ the system, y'know?" Loki turned his head and made proper eye-contact with her for the first time. Green eyes stared thoughtfully into brown for a long moment.

"You _are_ one of the clever ones, aren't you?" he murmured, this time without the mockery.

"Eh, maybe," Darcy responded with a shrug and a grin. "But I also struggle with operating an ATM and failed Calc 1 twice in a row, so I guess it's all relative."


	2. Masks

"It's all so bloody ridiculous—I can't even keep track of all the different groups… I would've eliminated the lot—made it all illegal!" Loki ranted, pacing animatedly around his cell, gesticulating with his hands, and generally looking like he was giving a very angry Shakespearean monologue. "I mean, really, humanity is envied realms over for their _versatility_ and diversity—their ability to adapt to different environments—but what do they do with it? Become an intergalactic laughingstock by acting like animals and refusing to align with those whose _adaptations_ differ even slightly from theirs! You creatures are so… so _ludicrously_ petty!"

"You know your planet's screwed up when the alien trying to take over the world makes more sense than most of its leaders," Darcy commented dryly.

"Honestly," Loki sighed, sitting back down cross-legged in one fluid motion, "if you could just get over fighting _yourselves_ like an unruly pack of _bilgesnipe_ , you might actually be a formidable opponent. As it is, no one can really take you seriously. Thus far you've been protected from the majority of attempts at interstellar imperialism because the would-be emperors have neither the time nor the patience to deal with all of your petty squabbling."

"Huh, nice," Darcy huffed with a smirk. "Note to selves—keep being assholes, it's saving our lives."

"Not quite the point I was making," Loki muttered, raising an eyebrow disapprovingly. Darcy stuck out her tongue impishly.

Over the course of the week or so she'd been staying at SHIELD HQ, she'd visited Loki for several hours every day, and he'd started to really warm up to her. Of course, he wouldn't talk about Thor or his history, and wasn't too divulgatory about his reasons for attacking the earth (confining himself to brief evil-overlord style monologues that Darcy didn't find very convincing).

However, he was extremely talkative otherwise, content to explain anything she wanted to know about the Nine Realms and what he called "peripheral worlds," which made up the known universe. It was about as much of a large-scale SNAFU as she expected. He was also curious about earth—about culture and government and history. It was incredibly refreshing to Darcy to be able to be one of the experts in the room, for once, able to talk about stuff she understood instead of listening to Jane and Erik ramble about science.

Of course, they wouldn't let her stay with him all day, for some weird reason; after a few hours, Ward would turn up and tell her Jane needed help in the lab or whatever—and it was always something a SHIELD grunt could've done instead; it was just that Jane was getting concerned because she was "spending way too much time with a crazy mass-murderer."

Thor would invite her to the boring meetings—probably trying to be nice—and she would sit in the corner with Tony Stark playing the dirtiest game of hangman she'd ever played. He also gave her access to his computer system, JARVIS, so she could basically watch free TV on any online service she could think of, use the fastest internet known to man and, she realized after clicking around for a while, access SHIELD's security footage and other records.

She felt a little high on power when she noticed this, and browsed through some of the files. Everyone who entered the Triskellion had a file, from Fury to the janitors and all the way down to her. Her entire history was efficiently summarized in a little computer folder. But reading about herself was boring. Loki's file, on the other hand, was much more interesting.

Since his arrival was fairly recent, most of the info was in the form of video clips—not much had been written, but plenty had been captured by networked security cameras which SHIELD had accessed, copied and wiped. The footage was pretty awful, of course—the Chitauri hacking and blasting their way through civilians while Loki impassively surveyed the carnage from a chariot or the upper levels of Stark Tower. It struck her as a little odd that they seemed more interested in shooting at the cars than the people, but she knew they'd been a hive mind—maybe they were too stupid to realize that the bigger moving things weren't bigger enemies.

She watched a hastily edited compilation of security footage and cell phone videos from Stuttgart, and then the SHIELD recordings from when he first arrived. The Tesseract glowed to life, depositing Loki's kneeling figure on the black floor. He looked up slowly, a wide, manic grin spreading across his sweat-streaked face. Darcy was taken aback. He had deep hollows under his eyes, and his skin looked like wet concrete. His movements were slow, ungainly. At the least he was exhausted, and probably sick. At the most…

The trouble with having so many conversations with someone clever was that her mind was sufficiently exercised to actually put the puzzle pieces together. His physical condition. The nonsensical rhetoric in his "bad guy speeches." The flippant, glossed over, almost disoriented way he talked about the invasion of New York.

And his eyes.

She paused the recording on a close-up of his face. She'd spent the last few days trying absentmindedly to decide on the exact shade of his eyes. Were they green, or hazel? Were they like grass, bottle glass, poison, mulch, avocados and hash browns? But they were definitely either dull green or bright hazel.

They definitely weren't blue.

But the security recording… her pulse thundered loudly in her ears, and she could feel herself distancing from the world around her, fading out as she stared into the clear, intense blue. His eyes were the color of the Twitter icon—too bright for eyes, even for natural blues.

She was pulling up Hawkeye and Erik's files before her brain had really organized her thoughts into anything coherent.

That vibrant blue… that was the color peoples' eyes turned when they were being mind-controlled. Her breaths were coming faster and faster without her consent—if she hadn't already been sitting, she would have fallen.

She'd thought privately that his plan was a bit stupid for someone she'd found to be so brilliant. _She_ could have come up with that, and _he_ was a _genius_.

Someone was talking to her, she realized belatedly.

"Darcy, are you ill?" Thor was asking. What did her face look like, she wondered, looking up like a deer in the headlights to stare into the concerned face of the blond Asgardian.

"I… no, I…" she floundered, not knowing what to do with this situation. Thor's eyes strayed to the tablet in her hands, and his face fell, his eyes filling with sorrow. He sat down beside her on the sofa, shoulders drooping, and sighed.

"He was not always like this," he murmured. "Once he was pure and clever and kind… for all his mischief, he solved more problems than he caused. I loved him," he continued, voice echoing with raw pain. "Had I any inkling of his distress… well," he admitted, "perhaps I wouldn't have noticed. You remember me when I first fell to earth, do you not? I was hard-headed, self-centered, and cared more for my own pride than for anyone around me. Perhaps it is my own fault he got so out of hand…"

He looked so dejected, and Darcy realized that if there was anyone she should tell about her discovery, it was Thor himself, the one person in this building who would immediately take Loki's wellbeing into consideration.

"Thor," she began, handing him the tablet and zooming in on Loki's eyes. "I don't think this is on you. And I don't necessarily think it's on him either."

-0-

The council was in uproar within the hour. Darcy stayed mostly out from underfoot while the Avengers and SHIELD high command shouted at each other, frantically pulling up footage and reports and calling in experts. Thor wanted his brother immediately released. Natasha and Fury wanted him thrown down a deep dark hole. Banner began reviewing the arrival footage on loop with increasing agitation. Barton was furious, but it was unclear whose side he was on. Captain America had sat down slowly and rested his forehead in his palm, looking ever moment of his ninety-some years. Tony was running his mouth as usual, but like Barton, he was unclear on what exactly he was arguing. Sundry other important-looking SHIELD suits threw opinions this way and that.

After perhaps an hour of this angry cacophony, Darcy slipped out, unnoticed. The guards by Loki's cell knew her by now—knew that for some reason this odd girl had clearance for this area—so they let her in without question. As the door opened, she felt nearly as intimidated as she had the first day. Her knees wobbled as she entered, and the lightheaded feeling she'd developed when she first saw the blue eyes had never really gone away.

"Darcy?" Loki greeted her, frowning and standing from where he'd been sitting against the slab that served as his bed. He approached the glass quickly, eyes roving over her face. "What's wrong?"

"Why didn't you tell anyone?" she blurted out, mind still reeling too much to be clever or diplomatic about it.

"What?" he asked, frowning deeper in confusion.

"We finally noticed your extreme eye-color change," she explained. "Green eyes your whole childhood, then suddenly Twitter-logo-blue when you come here, and they don't go green again until you got Hulk-smashed."

By the time she was halfway through her sentence, his face had gone blank, walls slamming into place in an instant. But Darcy knew enough about reading people to surmise that she'd hit a mark.

"A side-effect of using the scepter, no more," he snapped, turning away and pacing to the back of the cell, folding his arms.

"Uh-huh, and Santa Clause is having an affair with the Toothfairy," Darcy snapped. Before Loki could ask what the hell she meant by that, the door slammed open and Thor strode in.

"Brother, why did you not tell anyone?" he demanded, pressing the side of his fist against the clear cell wall.

"Oh, just barge right in, make yourself at home," Loki groused, gesturing widely at the big blond man.

"We were kinda' getting there," Darcy started to explain, but Loki cut her off.

"I owe you _nothing_ , 'King of Asgard,'" he hissed venomously. "My actions were my own, what does it matter the reason? Regardless of the circumstances, you will return me to Asgard for punishment, and I shall spend the rest of my days paying for my crimes, _all hail the justice of the king_.

"Do not forget, my would-be brother," he continued, approaching the partition to snarl into Thor's face, "that I also committed great crimes against Asgard and Jotunheim. No matter where I go, I will be surrounded by those who seek to punish me. So what use is it to anyone to make outlandish claims about my guilt or innocence, based on what, a trick of the light, a camera angle? You are trying too hard, oaf."

"Actually," Thor responded evenly, "the lady Darcy made the discovery." Loki rounded on Darcy.

"Yeah, and I know the difference between blue and green, thank you very much," she added, taking a seat in the computer chair which no one bothered to put away anymore. "Why is it a problem that people know you're innocent?"

" _Pride_ , miss Lewis," he bit out before turning away again. "Something you wouldn't understand."

"No, I wouldn't understand why pride would be worth letting yourself get locked up when you were actually being framed," she shot back. "How is _that_ a good idea?"

"Because I _won't be free,_ you insignificant mortal!" he roared, turning on his heel again, skin even paler than usual.

"I could talk to father, I am his heir, I could have you pardoned, brother, please just—"

"I AM NOT YOUR BROTHER, THOR!" Loki nearly screamed, cutting the bigger man off and pounding his fist against the cell wall. He glared at the blond man for a long moment, panting, expression nearly deranged, before turning away again.

"Leave," he croaked out.

"Loki," Thor rumbled, but the green-eyed man cut him off.

"I cannot bear the sight of you," he snarled, and then sat down on the opposite side of the cell, back to his two visitors. "You repel me—the both of you! Leave me in peace—or am I to be denied even the comfort of silence?"

Thor's shoulders drooped, and Darcy was struck by the way that a man over six feet tall—a god, no less—could look so much like a kicked puppy. He slowly turned and walked away, glancing sadly over his shoulder as he reached the door.

"Are you coming, lady Darcy?" he called softly.

"No," she responded, folding her arms and getting comfortable. "I'm staying."


	3. Truth

Darcy Lewis was surprisingly good at reading people. Perhaps it was a side effect of growing up with an angry alcoholic and an absentee drug addict—when she was small, she had to learn quickly to find her parents' tells, to know when they meant what they said, how sober they were, how long they'd be conscious, if they'd remember a request in the morning. Perhaps it was her struggle to get through high school and college; her personality clashed intensely with that of most authority figures, so if she wanted to succeed academically, she had to develop almost a sixth sense to tell her when she was pushing too far, and how to get out of trouble when she'd gone and stepped right in it.

She supposed it might have been easier to simply behave, but where was the fun in that? It went against her very nature—and she couldn't deny that the skills were coming in handy.

She sat in what she now referred to as _her_ office chair, arms folded, legs crossed, staring holes into Loki's tense back. His neck was tight like the muscles were clamping down on a torrent of unwanted words, not letting them reach his mouth. He hadn't spoken a word to her since Thor had left, but simply stood with his back to her, hands balled into white-knuckled fists. Anyone else might have assumed he was angry.

But Darcy Lewis wasn't anyone else.

"What are you so scared of?" she asked quietly, knowing that his alien ears would pick up her low voice but the cameras probably wouldn't. He didn't turn, didn't speak, but he shifted his posture slightly, standing a bit straighter, his shoulders coming up a little, like hackles rising. She saw the twitch in his neck when he swallowed.

"When you're angry," she continued, wanting to show her reasoning, and prove to this intelligent individual that she wasn't just hazarding a guess, "you usually insult people's intelligence, or you rant like someone out of a Shakespeare play, all SAT words and poetry. It just comes pouring out of you." She'd seen it a few times over the last week. He was angry at Thor, and angry at earth, and when he got angry, it was always because everyone was _stupid_. He would get frustrated, as—in his opinion—the only clever person in the room, and that frustration would boil into a rage when no one would listen to him.

But this was not that.

"But when you're scared," she continued, "you mask it with anger—but you talk differently. You're shorter with people, you insult them personally. It's like…" she paused, searching for a way to explain it. He turned his head minutely, just enough to look at her out of the corner of his eye, his long, moderately unkempt hair shadowing what little of his face he exposed. "It's like you want to devalue them, make them less than you—like you're trying to convince yourself that they aren't worth being scared of." He'd been scared of Odin, she'd noticed when his adoptive father came up.

He turned all the way around, and sat down on his bed, folding his arms and staring at her, face inscrutable, not wanting to let anything slip.

"So," she carried on, determined to work this out, "if you're scared, and if you weren't the one in control of the invasion, then there is someone else—someone who scares even you. And…" she paused, swallowing, her voice coming out dry, "if whoever it is scared you, they _terrify_ me."

Loki's eyes flicked down to his shoes, and he contemplated them, face still blank, for several minutes. Darcy held her tongue, letting him think about that for a while. Maybe it was presumptuous of her, to think he'd tell her and not Thor. But they didn't have all the emotional baggage that he had with Thor, and perhaps he'd even trust her to be more discreet about it than Thor.

"I don't know," he finally admitted in a hollow whisper. She blinked, and he looked up at her, façade cracking, face briefly twisting in misery before he got it under control. "I don't remember much," he confessed. "But from what I do re—" his voice cut out suddenly, and he swallowed thickly, clearing his throat before he could continue.

"What you have to understand, Darcy," he explained after getting ahold of himself, "is that when I caused trouble on Asgard—or even when I was just in proximity to it and could be blamed," he added with a flash of irritation, "the All-Father would always insist that I take responsibility. That I clean up my own mess," he clarified, gesturing vaguely with his hand. He cleared his throat again and carried on doggedly; clearly it was difficult for him to talk about his past, but he was tenacious, and now that he'd decided to explain, he planned to go through with it, whatever it cost him.

"And that worked out for him, for the most part," Loki explained. "I procured treasures and solidified treaties… I did more for Asgard just trying to make up for my own transgressions than Thor has done in all his years as crown prince." His voice was bitter now, and he glared off into space, mind clearly dwelling on Thor's inadequacies.

"But… this time," he snarled—well, it was a snarl until his voice cracked. "I don't remember much," he repeated, "and I'm afraid that… if I _do_ remember…"

"That they'll want you to go back and deal with it," Darcy finished for him when it became evident that he could not. He nodded, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, clearly trying to hide his face or stop himself from crying, but trying the whole time to look put together, instead of simply covering his face with his hands and sobbing.

"I cannot do that," he finally asserted. "I _will_ not. I'll go to prison for the rest of my very long life—Asgard can punish me however they wish. Because… even their darkest nightmares are dreams compared to what's behind me," he finished, finally looking up at her, eyes red but determined.

"Unless," she whispered, a half-formed idea trotting out her mouth without her say-so. He cocked his head to one side ever so slightly, indicating curiosity.

"Well," she reasoned, "you've made a pretty damn big mess _here_ , haven't you?"

-0-

"You want us to what?" Fury demanded, incredulous, as Darcy stood in front of his desk, feet planted, jaw set, determination written on every line of her body.

"I want you to grant Loki asylum on earth," she repeated, slowly and clearly, "in exchange for consultant work with SHIELD and the Avengers, regarding interplanetary threats and how to best defend ourselves from what's out there."

"Are you out of your mind?" Fury exclaimed. The other Avengers sat in the background, still processing. Darcy had invited them all to Fury's office for an impromptu meeting, but hadn't told any of them what it was about.

"Look," she reasoned, "if I have my facts straight—and Thor can verify this," she added, gesturing at the Asgardian god, "Loki has a history of fixing what he breaks—he makes up for his crappy behavior in spades. Am I wrong?" she asked, nodding at Thor. Thor shook his head.

"No, you are not wrong," he rumbled. "Loki's mischief was a plague to the nine realms, it is true, but he has always made up for his wrongs, and then some."

"So," Darcy continued, "I think this time we're the ones entitled to that, yeah? Weren't you the ones who were all concerned about the number of super-people and alien shenanigans in the world these days? Who better to teach us about how to deal with all that than the smartest guy in the galaxy, who owes us some serious reparations?"

Fury's eye narrowed as he appraised her. It wasn't like he hadn't taken in dangerous strays before, on the off-chance that they'd be useful. Of course, it was usually Barton bringing them in, but still.

"What exactly did you have in mind?" he asked thoughtfully. Darcy took a deep breath. This was the hard part to pitch.

"If we keep him here as a prisoner," she started, "he has no incentive to help us. If he goes back to Asgard, he has no incentive to help anyone. If his options are _where_ to sit in a cage, I imagine he'd pick the one with amenities he's more accustomed to." She nodded towards Thor, indicating Asgard.

"But." She paused, collecting herself. "If Thor can convince his dad to _banish_ Loki, _exactly_ like he banished Thor when we first met him—no powers, no title, just a regular joe cast down to earth, then he wouldn't be much of a threat to us, and his knowledge would still be helpful. And if we allowed him a measure of freedom, maybe helped enroll him in college, let him socialize with people from this planet, give him academic stimulation and the chance to have the same everyday struggles and challenges that humans face; if we give him a chance to live a life that's better than living in a cage, then the deal where he becomes a consultant suddenly benefits him. And," she added, "if he does go bad again, he's not going to start by torching the only planet willing to shelter him—plus, Asgard knows where he is.

"Hell," she added, "I have a spare room and was looking for a roommate—he can come live with me; enroll him in University of Colorado. There's an empty apartment two doors down, and the landlord's been having trouble finding a tenant because it's bigger and more expensive, since it's on a corner. SHIELD can rent it, have a couple of babysitter agents move in—I happen to know that there's a SHIELD base in Larimer, since you guys hired Jane," here she nodded at her boss.

"And if he goes bad, and you're in the line of fire?" Fury asked, eyebrow raised.

"Like I said," Darcy repeated, "he's smart—he won't alienate the only person willing to go to bat for him. And if he does…" she shrugged, "then that's my problem. I'll sign whatever wavers you want—but I'm willing to take the risk."

"And if whoever controlled him decides to come find him?" Natasha asked.

"Then they'll assume we sent him back to Asgard, I'd imagine," Darcy replied quickly. "Why would humans in their right minds keep someone as powerful as him around. And if whoever it is was powerful enough to attack Asgard," she added, "why would they bother trying to take over earth?" Thor nodded, substantiating her claim.

Fury studied his own interlocked fingers broodingly.

"If he does betray us," he finally said, looking up at the Avengers, "it'll likely become your problem real quick. So, thoughts?"

"I agree with lady Darcy," Thor said immediately. "I am confident that I can convince the All-Father to agree as well. His crimes against Asgard were minimal, and were largely committed against myself," he added, "so I am the only one with the right to charge him with wrongdoing. The Jotuns would probably wish him ill for his much more serious crimes against their people, but as they are still considered our enemies, we do not have to hand him over to them."

"I'm for it, too," Bruce said quietly.

"Well, _I'm_ not," Natasha shot back, stone-faced. "But if that's what everyone decides, then I'll go with it."

"You're _sure_ he was mind-controlled?" Barton checked. Bruce answered before Darcy could get a word in.

"And then some," the mild-mannered doctor said darkly. Everyone looked at him in varying states of confusion. Tony's face morphed into several different expressions in about three seconds, like he'd just realized something gut-wrenchingly horrible. Darcy frowned, still not getting it.

"Oh, god," Tony finally croaked, as Bruce passed him a tablet.

"What?" Darcy demanded, not liking to be out of the loop while they discussed _her_ plan.

"He shows signs in this recording of prolonged torture," Bruce admitted with a sigh, taking off his glasses and rubbing his face. "I'm guessing his head is a little harder to get into than ours."

Thor bounded to his feet, rage twisting his face, and Jane flung herself at his chest, imploring him to stay calm and not destroy the tower or anything else Thor-scale.

"Then I'm for the plan," Barton agreed evenly, bringing them back to the topic at hand. "With all the necessary safeguards, of course," he amended. Natasha looked at him with a hint of surprise. "Well," he added, answering her unspoken question, "I wasn't locked up for what I did under the influence of the scepter. Selvig's a free man, the other surviving agents are free men—it would be kinda' unfair to hold him to a different standard just 'cause we didn't know him personally before he got taken over." Natasha pursed her lips, but said nothing.

"Cap, Stark," Fury said, looking between the two men, "you've both been awfully quiet."

"I fail to see a downside," Steve shrugged, mind still reeling a little from Banner's announcement, but bringing himself back to the present discussion with practiced professionalism. "As long as miss Lewis is comfortable with the risks, of course. I'm sure he could stay with agents…" Darcy was shaking her head.

"He's comfortable with me," she explained simply. "And the point isn't to keep him prisoner, or even make him feel like a prisoner. The point is to get him to make a home here—and I think I can do that better than any agent. No offense," she added, turning to Widow and Hawkeye.

"None taken," Natasha assured her, shaking her head.

"Stark?" Steve asked, turning to the billionare.

"Yeah," he said tightly, eyes still riveted on the tablet screen. "Good. Let's do it."

"Great," Darcy said, relief washing over her. "Now… he's going to need a civilian identity. Know anyone who can make that happen?" she asked, smiling expectantly at Fury.


	4. Luke

"Hey!" Darcy greeted Loki enthusiastically as Barton led him into the room. This was the first time she'd seen him without a partition between them, and she waved him over to the couch where she sat, laptop in her lap, Agent Sitwell in the chair beside her, working on her new roomie's papers. Loki's hands were bound by a long chain that glowed faintly blue—it suppressed his magic, according to Thor and Jane. The big blond had used the Tesseract to return to Asgard early that morning, intending to pitch Darcy's idea to Odin. Loki, for his part, was not at all confident that it would actually happen—and wasn't entirely enthused about the plan, either. He had agreed to it when Darcy reminded him that his alternative was eternal boredom—or worse—but she could tell that his acerbic reactions to it were a case of preemptive sour grapes; he was trying his damndest not to get his hopes up.

He sat regally down on the sofa beside her, ignoring agent Sitwell's frightened gulp and apprehensive posture. Darcy shifted so that he could see the screen of her SHIELD-issued laptop.

"What do you want your name to be?" she asked, showing him the forms she'd been filling out. She'd listed his place of birth as Westminster, United Kingdom, his age as 25, had made a guess at his height and weight, and had actually already typed in a name—anticipating his next response.

"I don't care," he drawled, shaking his head. "You pick." But she watched his keen eyes taking in all the information on the forms, memorizing it. Yep—definitely trying not to get his hopes up.

"Okay, 'Luke Randle,' then," she said, indicating what she'd already typed in. "That way, if I screw up and call you 'Loki' it'll sound like a slip of the tongue, or an embarrassing nickname—not suspicious in the least. Now, I think mid-twenties is probably the youngest you can pass for, so your backstory will have to include why you didn't start school at eighteen. And take it from me—don't say you got expelled from anywhere, because that is a _nightmare_ to deal with."

"How did you get expelled, exactly?" he asked, raising an eyebrow and looking at her. Close up, his eyes were even greener. "You're no fool, for all your madcap ways," he added. "You know when to stop, before you really get hurt. So how did it go so far that time?" She smiled sadly.

"Well," she admitted, "I'd always been a troublemaker, and had a few black marks on my record. Then… I guess you could say that I made a point that needed to be made," she continued vaguely. "By that point, some of the admin people were just looking for an excuse to get rid of me, so I made one late payment—and when I say 'late' I mean that processing time took longer than maybe it _should_ have—and they kicked me out.

"So, let's say that you deferred school for a while because you wanted to travel," she suggested, forcing them back onto the topic at hand.

"Let's say that I went traveling, spent all my savings, and had to work in kitchens to feed myself until I could finally afford to go home," he amended. "The key to telling a good lie is to include an embarrassing detail. People being dishonest are more likely to try and make themselves look good, but in reality everyone messes up."

"Good to know," she commented with a small smile, typing that into a document marked "backstory."

"Please don't give her any ideas," Jane said from the doorway. Darcy snorted, and Loki shot her the most innocent look Darcy had ever seen on a grown man's face in her life. Oh yeah, Darcy thought privately. They were going to get along _great_.

-0-

Eleven hours and plenty of revising later, Luke Anthony Randle—middle name chosen to annoy Tony, last name chosen because it sounded like "random," and Darcy's thought process was "any random name,"—had a birthday in May, a previous address in London (and before that, Westminster) a school record from kindergarten through graduating high school, parents who'd died in a car crash when he was twelve, and a foster family with whom he was on somewhat frigid terms after his impromptu round-the-world backpacking trip. He'd also CLEP'd out of an—in Darcy's opinion—unfair number of classes, and had aced the AP tests for several others, giving him forty college credits to start with, and proving that he knew his way around math and science.

However, he refused to major in either, saying that humans had only just begun to grasp the most basic concept of how the universe worked, and he couldn't bring himself to dumb everything down. He opted to double-major in history and literature, since he was unfamiliar with both, for the most part, as far as Earth was concerned, but had enjoyed learning what little he knew of them. He had also—with great trepidation—allowed Barton to cut off all but a few inches of his long, thick hair. To Darcy's surprise, it was curly when it didn't have half a pound of gel holding it down.

"When Natasha gets back, we'll talk about color," Barton said simply as he put the scissors away and removed the sheet he'd covered Loki's clothes with. For his first excursion into the rest of the Triskelion, they'd given him a basic SHIELD-issued uniform: dark blue pants, a grey t-shirt with the SHIELD emblem on his upper right pec, and a dark blue jacket with the SHILED logo again, decorating the back. Loki felt the back of his head with his still-chained hand. His lips were tight, and he merely nodded at Barton to show comprehension. The agent left silently, and Loki blew out a long sigh.

"I would have preferred to leave that until after Thor returns," he muttered.

"Why?" Darcy responded, coming up behind him and brushing some stray hairs off the back of his jacket. It was the first time she'd touched him, she realized. He didn't feel like a magical-space-alien-god-whatever. He just felt like a dude—a dude with hair stuck to his clothes.

"Because if the tidings he brings are poor," Loki explained tightly, "then I would have wished to keep my hair. In my… in Asgardian culture," he amended, "long hair is a symbol of success and independence, while shorter hair is worn by commoners or those in servitude."

"So, you'd want to still look like a prince while in a jail cell," Darcy translated.

"I'd want to keep some of my dignity intact, yes," he snapped. Darcy nodded once, getting that.

"Well, _whatever_ Thor says, it'll still grow back," she reminded him. "Hair does do that." He shrugged moodily.

"I suppose it's a silly thing to be concerned over, in the grand scheme of things," he murmured.

"Eh, you're a college student—or you will be soon," Darcy shrugged. "We all get weirdly obsessive over silly things." Loki scoffed a little, but said nothing.

"Oh, enough," Darcy grumbled, knowing what was going through his head. "It's not about what you're going to learn in classes. College is a place where you go to find yourself. You know, try new things, rub shoulders with people you never would have met back home, take a class in Japanese Drumming, make bad decisions about sex, drink too much, spend a week trying to beat Call of Duty, play poker in the elevator. It's not about sitting in class and taking notes. It's about finding who you are."

"Well," he responded heavily, "I've been who I am for over a thousand years. I sincerely doubt anything is going to change because I have a few drinks and take a drumming class."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Darcy said cryptically, handing him a little mirror from her purse so he could see Barton's work on his hair. He gazed at his reflection in shock. She wondered when the last time was that he'd worn it short. When he handed back the mirror, his face was unreadable.

"It's about that time," agent Sitwell announced, entering the room with Steve behind him. "Until Asgard gets rid of your magic, you're sleeping in the detention area." Loki nodded once, having anticipated that, and stood, brushing out the wrinkles in his borrowed pants. Then he paused, and turned to Darcy.

"Thank you," he said, sincerity ringing through his voice. "However this goes… thank you, Darcy," he finished, unable or unwilling to say more. She grinned.

"I'll be seeing you bright and early tomorrow for more boring paperwork and 'Midgard 101,'" she assured him, still more confident of the outcome. He smiled back—a small smile, but a smile all the same—and then departed with the agent and the Captain.

-0-

Bright and early ended up being nearly five in the evening, because two hours after Loki was returned to his cell, the sky lit up with a familiar burst of rainbow colors, and Thor and an unfamiliar woman landed in the Triskellion courtyard. The woman was Frigga of Asgard, who had come on behalf of the Asgardian government to suppress Loki's magic. Thor led her to the detention area and Barton let her into the cell, then both men left, giving her some time alone with her son. She cast some sort of a spell over the cameras and hidden microphones, so no one on the security team knew what happened for the hour or so that they were in there, but when she left, Loki was sleeping, with a head of curly dirty-blond hair, just like Frigga's own.

"Technically speaking," she explained to the assembled Avengers, agents and Darcy, "he still has magic, in the same way that a sleeping human body is still expending energy. It's keeping his skin and hair and eyes looking the way they do. It's no more than the energy you expend to keep your heart pumping," she assured them. "But if you ever learn to sense or otherwise detect magic, do not be surprised if you get a reading from him. The process has drained him, I'm afraid, and will need to be repeated periodically," she murmured, a shadow of pain passing across her face, "but he will wake restored by the end of tomorrow.

"Thank you," she added, turning to Darcy. "My sons both tell me you have been his advocate, lady Darcy. You have my eternal gratitude." Then she bowed low, making Darcy's cheeks burn. It was one thing when Thor kissed her hand and called her "lady;" he was just, well, just _Thor_. But this woman, she was a queen—she was on another level. And that made Darcy self-conscious.

"My pleasure," she responded honestly. "I mean, my dream job _is_ making sure that only the bad guys get locked up and the good guys go free, y'know? So this is sort of right up my alley."

"I owe you a great debt," Frigga said, straightening up. "If you ever need anything, do not hesitate to call on me."

"You'll be the first to know, ma'am," Darcy assured her awkwardly. After that, Frigga had departed on the newly Tesseract-repaired Rainbow Bridge, leaving Thor to spend some time in his home-away from home.

"Although the All-Father was reluctant to embrace your scheme," Thor admitted privately to Darcy, "Heimdall had previously informed mother of all that transpired, and she convinced him to agree."

"I kinda' figured that," Darcy admitted with a nod. "But now that the ball's rolling, I just hope I can live up to everybody's expectations."

"You will do brilliantly," Thor assured her. "As you have noticed, my brother likes you—and there are few he would deign to call friend. You are the very best person I can think of, to help him live."

Darcy smiled hopefully, then punched Thor affectionately on the arm.

"C'mon," she said, standing up. "Stark said he brought some video games—let's teach you to play Super Mario while we wait for Sleeping Beauty to wake up."


	5. Roadtrip

"Four summer classes is _too many_ ," Darcy bit out as the wind from the 65mph she was driving blew her long hair into a tangle. "They're condensed, remember? Pick two—and one of them should be the stupid 'College 101' course, trust me."

"How is four too many?" Loki demanded, holding up 'his' tablet with the class schedule he'd selected. "You said yourself that College 101 is something I can pass in my sleep, so that doesn't count, and then it's just three."

"You can pass it in your sleep, yeah," Darcy responded evenly, "but you still have to _show up_. That's two hours a day, three days a week. The other three are each four hours a day, four days a week. That's in addition to you doing a share of the housework and errands, like a normal roommate," she reminded him. "Plus you're going to have a _lot_ of homework for each of these, and at some point, you do need to sleep. Pick two. I recommend Brit Lit," she added, nodding towards the tablet screen. "That will have the most homework out of any of them. _Maybe_ you can get away with Resistance in History—that's Willis's class, right?" Loki checked the professor's name on the class list and nodded.

"He's easy," Darcy continued. "So maybe, if you're really feeling like exhausting yourself this summer, maybe Brit Lit, College 101 and Resistance. But there's no way you can also do American Lit. Two periods of that cross over with College 101 anyway—the computer won't even let you sign up."

Loki sighed moodily, removing American Lit from his class list and hitting "register" for the rest. The summer courses all started June 6th, so he had two weeks until he officially became a CU student. Half of that time, approximately, would be spent on the "Road Trip Experience" on which Darcy had insisted.

" _No, we're not flying there—I'm driving us," Darcy corrected Fury as he started talking about the SHIELD jet that would be dropping them off at the facility in CO. Everyone looked at her questioningly. "Call it a crash course," she explained. "Pun definitely not intended," she added with an awkward wince. "It'll take like a week to get there from here, we'll have to make a bunch of stops, hotels, gas stations, restaurants, whatever—we'll run into a bunch of different people in a bunch of different places that you'll probably never see again."_

" _And make sure none of them recognize me, you mean," he surmised. She nodded._

" _Plus, you can learn how to drive, seeing as SHIELD issued you with a license," she continued, "and you can get comfortable in your persona—try a few out until you find something that fits. I know you're a wizard at this stuff, pun definitely intended that time," she snickered before becoming serious again, "but this one's kind of a long con." She shrugged. "If there's going to be any problems, better we know about them_ before _we get near people that you'll actually rub shoulders with more often. Plus,_ I _need time to get the story straight, and_ I'm _not any kind of wizard." Loki nodded, agreeing with that._

" _Add a civilian car to the resources list," Fury sighed. Given SHIELD's large budget, he'd graciously started putting together a kit of stuff that Loki would need—from simple things like a few changes of clothes to get him started, to expensive things like a decent phone and a wireless-enabled tablet. Darcy's eyes nearly bugged out of her head. Was Fury about to_ give _him a car?_

" _Stark has offered to get you on your feet," the SHIELD director said by way of explanation._

" _That's… very kind of him," Loki commented, clearly not sure if he trusted the billionaire who had threatened him, offered him a drink, defeated him, was now, for some reason, one of his advocates, and yet somehow couldn't stand to be in the same room with him for more than a few minutes._

_Darcy privately thought that Tony was having an attack of conscience. She'd read about what happened to him when he was captured by the Ten Rings, and she knew he was pretty sensitive when the topic of torture came up. Probably he thought he should have been smart enough to realize sooner that something wasn't right. But she kept her speculations to herself. If he wanted to talk about his personal shit with her, then he'd plunk himself down on the couch and talk. But he hadn't, so he didn't, and she left it alone._

They were now driving through Pennsylvania in a black 2009 Toyota Corolla—a pretty dang nice car, all things considered, and affordable to maintain, which was a stipulation of Darcy's when Tony suggested something more ostentations. At home she had a blue 2005 Ford Focus—another good, sturdy little car. And speaking of cars…

"Okay, now that you have a class schedule, time for Driving 101," she announced, pulling over. It was a nice, open road with almost no traffic. The perfect spot for Loki's first time behind the wheel. "Chinese fire drill," she added, putting the car in park and taking off her seatbelt.

"What?" Loki asked, confused by the slang. That was another thing she definitely needed time to teach him.

"That's when everybody gets out of the car all of a sudden and switches seats, usually at a stoplight," she explained, looking in her wing mirror before opening her door and hopping out. Loki followed suit, and a moment later buckled himself into the drivers' seat. "Okay," Darcy announced, pointing at pedals and levers. "Stop, go, forward, backward, neutral—we'll get to that later—turns, horn, speed, speed limit," she added, pointing at a sign in the distance, "and stay on the right side of the road. Try not to get a ticket before the ink dries on that license."

"Can't say I'm particularly confident in your teaching style," Loki muttered.

"I believe in learning by doing," Darcy responded. "Now, always put your foot on the break before you try to shift out of park—otherwise you won't be able to move the lever."

-0-

The lesson was uneventful, and in relatively short order, Loki was able to drive decently well. She wouldn't want him behind the wheel in a car chase, but she was confident enough that he could get from point A to point B without killing them. After about an hour of letting him get comfortable and narrating the rules of the road, Darcy unboxed the aux cable that Tony had thoughtfully provided along with the car, and plugged it into the jack.

"Time to see what kind of music you like," she announced, hooking up his new phone and opening Pandora. "Okay, when you think of 'good music,' what do you think of?" she asked, scrolling through a list of suggestions.

"Erm, the opposite of what Barton likes," he said, pursing his lips thoughtfully. Darcy snorted.

"Can you be a little more specific?" she asked with a grin.

"Something simple," he suggested with a shrug. "Instrumental—keep the electronic additions to a minimum."

"Lindsey Stirling Violin is it," she murmured, typing in the name and creating a station. "When you hear something you like or don't like, let me know—I can tell the program, and it'll tailor your recommendations based on what you say."

"Got it," he responded with a nod as the first song began.

-0-

"Wish we weren't undercover," Darcy snickered. "This would _so_ be going on Facebook!" Loki's face at trying ice cream for the first time—and not even _good_ ice cream, just a regular McDonalds Caramel Sundae—was glowing with indescribable bliss.

"What _is_ this?" he moaned, shoveling another huge spoonful into his mouth and savoring the flavor with his eyes closed.

"The cure for sadness," she responded with a laugh as she stuffed her own spoonful into her mouth. "There's a Cold Stone Creamery two blocks from our building," she added. "Really good, high-quality ice-cream place," she explained. "Something tells me you'll be in there a lot." Loki nodded emphatically, continuing to gulp the stuff down like it was the most delicious thing he'd ever tasted in his life. Maybe it was, she reasoned. Maybe Loki and ice cream were like soulmates, kept apart until now by the twist of fate that he'd grown up on Asgard where ice cream apparently did not exist.

"Darcy," he asked in a low voice once he was halfway through his sundae and had sated himself enough to slow down. "How does one go about getting a job?"

"The application process is mostly online," she replied. "I can show you on your phone—but you do get a stipend from SHIELD for consultations."

"I find relying on charity from my enemies distasteful," he admitted quietly. "I have little choice in the matter about some things, but I would like to pursue more independence as expediently as possible."

"I hear ya," Darcy nodded. "I'll show you some applications when we get to the motel for the night."

"Thank you," he responded, turning his attention back to his ice cream, instantly bringing his mood back up. And Darcy smiled to herself, realizing that him unabashedly asking her for help meant that he categorized her differently—which was a step in the right direction.

-0-

"Twenty bucks says she's dead by the end of the week," Natasha muttered morbidly.

"You're on," Clint responded with a shrug. "I'll take myself out for a couple cold ones."

"You're making bets on whether or not she _survives_?" Steve demanded incredulously.

"Hundred bucks says he bolts by the end of the month," Tony added, holding up a crisp Benjamin and waving it in front of everyone.

"Done," Banner laughed.

"And this all isn't in poor taste or anything," Steve grumbled.

"Relax, cap," Barton assured him. "She'll be fine. Fury wouldn't have let her walk into the op unless he was reasonably confident of her success."

"Sometimes even the best commanders lose soldiers," Steve murmured, face dark.

"But on the other hand, nothing ventured, nothing gained. A willingness to take necessary risks is also an important part of command," said Phil.

There was a long pause where everyone nodded thoughtfully.

Then Tony did a double-take, Bruce stood up straighter, taking off his reading glasses and staring in shock, Steve and Natasha bolted to their feet and Barton dropped the water bottle he'd been holding. The contents made a glug-glug sound as the bottle emptied onto the floor, but no one made a move to pick it up.

"Phil?" Tony choked out, regaining his faculties first.

"Good to see you all made it," the agent said with a warm smile.

"How did you survive?" Steve exclaimed, bounding forward and wrapping the smaller man into a totally unexpected bear hug.

"I didn't," Phil laughed—and everyone was pretty sure it was more a laugh of excitement that his childhood idol had hugged him than because his death was amusing.

"Mother repaired his injuries and recalled his soul from Valhalla," Thor announced, following the agent into the room, positively beaming.

"Guessing she didn't return the other couple hundred people who died in the battle of New York," Natasha guessed acerbically.

"No," Thor admitted sadly. "Very few souls are strong enough to make the trip twice—it was a great risk to even try with the Son of Coul, but I had every faith that he would return intact." Barton and Natasha had by this time shouldered past Cap to envelop Coulson in a super-spy group hug.

" _Why_ is nobody answering the damn interco—" Fury trailed off as Barton stepped out of the way to reveal the recently rejuvenated Coulson.

The unflappable SHIELD director's jaw hit the floor so hard it almost echoed.

-0-

"So you typically live on your own?" Loki checked as he lounged on the king bed on his side of the two interconnecting rooms they'd rented on SHIELD's dime from a roadside motel.

"Sometimes," she said with a shrug. "When I can't find someone to rent with me."

"Do you feel safe?" he asked, sitting up a little. "I was reading some news articles in the car—about serial killers. It was quite disturbing."

"Eh, that's what this baby's for," Darcy responded with a shrug, pulling her trusty Taser out of her purse.

"I suppose a personal firearm would even the odds," he muttered.

"Oh, this isn't a gun," Darcy laughed, climbing onto the bed next to him to show off her prized possession. "This li'l guy is a Taser. It fires two small electric dart thingies, and zaps the victim—er," she amended, "the attacker, with enough electricity to cause extreme pain, muscle contractions, and basically incapacitate anybody who tries to mess with me. It even worked on Thor!"

"You shot Thor?" Loki exclaimed in surprise, looking down at her abruptly. She nodded, looking very satisfied.

"Mm-hm!" she asserted. Then she quickly looked up at him, dropping a little of the cat-that-ate-the-canary expression. "I mean, not just ' _cause_. He freaked me out—fell from the sky, he was shouting nonsense and flipping out and _huge_! I got scared and pulled the trigger. But… it is kinda cool to be able to say I dropped the god of thunder like a sack o' rocks," she snickered.

"Yes," Loki agreed with a chortle. "That is quite the thrilling tale. Remind me not to frighten you," he added, but in more of a jocular tone than one of concern. Privately, he wondered if he _could_. Nothing seemed to faze her.

Part of him felt a horrible, choking impotence at the thought that he was no longer someone with the capacity to scare this human woman. But another part of him—the cleverer part—could not help but admire her. An Avenger she was not, a warrior she was not, but like him, she could still hold her own when things came to a head.

Plus, she could appreciate seeing Thor getting his rear end handed to him—they were going to get along _famously_.

Provided he didn't suddenly remember something awful—like agreeing of his own volition to serve the Chitauri.

And provided whoever had controlled him didn't scorch her home planet looking for him.


	6. Firsts

"To be completely frank with you, it's been a while since I've been around modern conveniences—my last few jobs were mostly waiting tables at little cafés and pubs in the middle of nowhere here and there…" Loki smiled, laughed a little self-deprecating laugh, "so I'm not familiar with the machines. But I'm excellent with customers, that I can promise you—plus I speak several languages."

"Well, I appreciate your honesty," Max, the middle aged Barnes & Noble manager said with a grin. "We can train you on an espresso machine, but it's hard to train people skills." He stood up and offered his hand—Loki shook it firmly, a gesture in which Darcy had coached him, and smiled back winningly.

"And if a bookseller position becomes available," Max assured him as he ushered his newest barista out of the office, "I'm sure we can transfer you."

"Thank you very much," Loki said warmly. "I look forward to working with you."

He tried not to let any sarcasm or disdain creep into his voice, and kept his posture and walk casual as he headed out onto the sales floor and then exited the store. Only when he reached the relative privacy of the bus stop did he sink onto the bench, groaning and pressing the heels of his hands into his forehead. This was humiliating—this whole thing. Making coffee for strangers to support himself, being patronized by human professors who thought they knew what they were talking about, the backwards plumbing in Darcy's… in _their_ apartment…

" _Living room," Darcy announced as she led the way into the small living space on the fourth floor of the very plain brick building she'd parked at. "Kitchen," she added, gesturing through a wide doorway. "Bathroom's at the end of the hall," she continued, gesturing down a short, narrow hallway with four doors. "Hot means cold and cold means hot. My room's on the left, yours is on the right, spare towels and sheets are in that closet. There's a little balcony through the kitchen on the other side."_

_Loki had silently shouldered his bag and headed down the little corridor, turning right at the second door, as the first was too narrow to admit a person, and therefore must be the closet. The room that was now his contained a bed with white sheets and a brown coverlet, a desk with one of those rolling swivel chairs, an empty bookshelf, a plain dresser, and a wide, shallow closet with two sliding doors and a rod strung along the top to hang clothes on. He set his duffel bag on the bed and went to look out the window. It faced the same way as the balcony, and overlooked the rooftops of many smaller buildings nearby._

_The view wasn't bad, he told himself bracingly. And it was better than a cell._

_He turned and began exploring the area more critically. There was a plain digital clock on the desk near the bed, and a lamp with a hinge that could overlook either the desk or the bed; he could have good reading light in either position. There was also an overhead light, with a switch by the door._

_Under the bed lay a pair of low plastic tubs on wheels. One contained what he guessed was a second set of sheets and another comforter of some sort, and the other was empty. On the end of the bed lay a thick dark green blanket, knitted from fluffy yarn. The color reminded him inexplicably of home, and his throat tightened._

" _Hey," Darcy called, leaning her head in the door, "life skills time—you're going to order a pizza and learn how to use a wash machine."_

" _Coming," he said quietly, and followed her out, glancing at her room on the way. It was a mirror image of his, but looked smaller at first glance—then he realized it was because she'd actually filled it with personal items. Clothes were strewn across the floor, there was a huge round unmarked sack of something shoved in the corner, and every surface was covered with small items—books, empty mugs, makeup, cords… her window overlooked the rickety tangle of stairways that they'd climbed to get up so far._

'Making coffee for strangers is better than subjecting myself to whatever torments Asgard can concoct.' Loki reminded himself with a deep breath as the bus arrived and pulled over to collect him and two women with bags full of shopping who had joined him at the stop. 'Besides,' his mind supplied, 'it's not as though I haven't put up with worse humiliations in my life. At least this one I picked.'

He had originally thought of working at Cold Stone—Darcy was right, everything in their shop was pure frozen pleasure—but he was concerned that if his hands got too cold, he'd start turning blue in front of everybody. It was unnatural, not being able to control his magic. It felt like he was always wearing an ill-fitting suit of clothes; itchy and tight and dragging and generally cumbersome. And the worst bit was, he'd used to hide his blue skin without even realizing he did it—but it was like breathing; as soon as he became aware of it, he had to actually make an effort to do it.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to read Darcy's text. She'd been messaging him all day to help him practice using the thing. She'd sent him a picture of an empty container of milk.

[Can you get more of this when you pass Aldi?] she requested. [Just this exact one. Put it on the green credit card from Fury.] SHIELD was paying Darcy a stipend basically to babysit him and get him into human life; she'd insisted on getting two paycards so that she could send him on errands just like this.

[Sure,] he said, standing up and making his way towards the exit door. [I got the B&N job.]

[CONGRATULATIONS!] she exclaimed with a long string of smiley faces. The bus pulled over at the shopping center stop, and Loki shouldered the back door open and stepped onto the curb. He'd been living here for three days, and between that and the road trip, not one person had given him a funny look. It was a tribute to his acting skills, and, he grudgingly admitted, to Darcy's tutelage. Really his major challenge had been figuring out which of her mannerisms were typical earth behaviors which he ought to copy, and which ones were, well, _Darcy_.

But since Americans were, for the most part, fully engrossed in their smartphones, or else in a huge rush to get everywhere, no one really paid him enough attention to him to notice little things like him being _Loki_. Of course, he got more attention than the average person. His accent, for one—he'd considered changing it, but Darcy had vetoed, saying that him being international would help explain to all of her friends why they'd never heard of him before.

"Plus, that accent is an aphrodisiac," she'd added with a smirk. "If you're looking to get laid, just talk like yourself." Barton had guffawed from the corner, and Romanoff had nodded her head once to the side, tilting her mouth down in an attitude of reluctant agreement.

"English it is," he'd laughed.

It hadn't occurred to him that this would be the case, but he'd noticed people's reactions immediately. Even as he checked out at Aldi, responding politely to the cashier's greeting, he saw her and the two people in line behind him perk up their ears and start to pay attention. Now this was something about earth that he actually liked. Nothing about him had been considered particularly attractive on Asgard, but here—at least in the parts of America where he'd been so far—his voice, face and body drew people in.

It was a poor substitute for a kingdom, but he was looking for _anything_ positive about this.

-0-

The SHIELD base in Larimer was a plain 4-storey office building marked "Trade Center Ltd" in big blue letters. The foyer looked like that of an ordinary office building, with beige chairs and three receptionists at desks side-by-side. Darcy looked a little nonplussed as they entered, clearly wondering if they were at the right place, but Loki had anticipated this sort of chicanery. He slid past Darcy and headed up to one of the reception desks.

"Mr. Randle and Miss Lewis here for a meeting with Mrs. Hansen," he announced conversationally. The receptionist put on a winning smile and rifled through a bunch of papers.

"Wonderful weather we're having this morning," she said brightly as she extracted a sheet from the stack.

"Yes," Loki agreed, "but I always carry an umbrella."

"First elevator on your left," she said, handing him the paper. Once they entered the nondescript elevator, Loki punched in a numeric code from the sheet in his hand, and the car began to descend.

"According to the Captain," he said after they stood in silence for a while, "SHIELD has been using the same codes for nearly a century. Only for people with appointments, of course," he added. "If they hadn't known who I was, it would have been a slightly more complicated negotiation."

"If they know who we are, what's the use in having a code?" Darcy asked.

"So we can indicate if we're being followed, or if we have explosives strapped to us, or any number of other unpleasant things," he explained. "And the beauty of it is," he added as the doors opened, "an enemy would assume they were being given an old code as a trick, and would try nearly anything else." They stepped off of the elevator, into a cinderblock hallway with the SHIELD emblem in bronze on the wall.

"That's more like it," Darcy commented, nodding at the crest.

"Loki, Darcy," Barton greeted them from the end of the hall.

"Hey, Agent Feathers!" Darcy responded with a grin and a wave. "Where's Spider Lady?"

"Working," he responded, unable to help the little grin that spontaneously spread across his face at Darcy's general goofiness. "D, you're in briefing room four, down that hall, first right turn. "Loki, you're with me."

"Don't wait for me," Loki said as Darcy turned and left. "I'll take the train back if mine is longer than yours." She waved over her shoulder to show she'd heard, and then headed off.

"She make you watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy yet?" Barton asked after they'd walked in silence for a while. Loki laughed.

"It's been recorded on a long, long list," he responded. "I have so far seen The Princess Bride, Star Wars, a New Hope, The Dark Knight, the first season of Sherlock, and several episodes of Star Trek."

"Solid choices," Clint nodded approvingly. "You actually like any of 'em?"

"Sherlock," Loki replied immediately.

"Figures," Clint snorted. "Oh, I'll take your phone, by the way," he added, reaching out a hand. Loki dug it out of his pocket and handed it over, and the archer stuck it in the inner pocket of his jacket before opening a door.

"He's all yours," he announced.

Loki entered the room—and froze.

"We meet again," said Coulson calmly, folding his hands on top of his immaculately clean desk.

"How?" Loki demanded when he could speak again, advancing a few steps into the room to get a better look at the decidedly not dead agent.

"Your mother," Coulson responded simply. "I'm going to be working with you on your monthly debriefings for now."

"How did you get so unlucky as to be assigned to the man who killed you?" Loki inquired, eyebrow raised as he sat down. "I was the one who killed you, yes?" he checked awkwardly. He distinctly thought he remembered running the man through, but he also remembered a conversation—afterwards?—and getting blown up. Shortly after that his head had started to clear a bit, but then he'd been lost in a horrible haze of trying to sort out how much of what he was doing was his own volition and how much had been planted inside of his mind. While he'd been distracted, he'd continued to act, so he wasn't entirely sure what had happened after confronting this man.

"Deputy Director Coulson was the only Level 8 agent who wasn't afraid of you," the black-haired agent who'd often escorted Darcy to his cell back at the Triskellion explained. He was sitting off to the side, posture deceptively casual, firearm within easy reach.

"Let's say I'm with Miss Lewis, banking on you not being stupid enough to try the same thing twice," Coulson added. "Now, we have a lot of material to get through today, so let's get started, shall we?"

"What would you like to know?" Loki asked, crossing his legs comfortably.

"Let's start with what you can tell us about our closest neighbors, and go from there," Phil suggested, sitting back and hitting a button on what Loki guessed was a recording device.

-0-

" _You have to remember, the Amiishi may be a small tribe but they are ancient and proud, Brother," Loki explained, speaking slowly and clearly, gesturing with his hands as he tried to get through to Thor, who was pacing back and forth like a wild animal in a cage._

" _It's only natural for their princess to speak to you as an equal," he continued. Thor growled furiously at the mention of the incident._

" _Tiny slip of a girl, hardly more than human," Thor muttered. "How dare she speak thus to the crown prince of Asgard?"_

" _Because with her father deathly ill, that 'slip of a girl' is the_ ruler _of her_ people _—she practically outranks you," Loki moaned. "If you wish for Asgard to preserve equitable relations with the Amiishi, you_ must start _with_ her _."_

" _I care little for such petty fools—why should the might of Asgard seek to align itself with a backwater tribe in the first place?"_

" _Because there are dragons the size of this palace terrorizing the northern lands," Loki reminded him, getting frustrated, "and the Amiishi can tame dragons."_

" _Then I shall simply fight off the dragons myself!" Thor roared._

" _You can't—you'll devastate their crops,_ ruin _their ecosystem…" but he could tell Thor had stopped hearing him. He sighed, rubbing a hand tiredly across his face. Why even ask if he didn't care to know the answer?_

 _Why did no one_ listen _to him?_

-0-

"And that is everybody within a few weeks' flight," Loki finished, sliding the papers he'd wound up drawing on towards Coulson, Ward, Hill and two other agents who'd wandered in during what had quickly become a lecture.

"So, green is friendlies," Hill summarized, pointing at the different colored highlights on the diagram. "Pink might attack us, and yellow is so-so?"

"More like bees," Loki corrected. His voice was rough from talking for so long—how many hours had they been here? "If you don't mess with them, they won't mess with you—but if you go poking your noses into their business, you may not like them very much."

"Okay," Coulson said, turning off the recording device and handing it to one of the unnamed agents. "Take this and have it transcribed and filed. Jackson, contact NASA and let them know that bit about the satellites. No point in transmitting Syrinian mating calls when we're just trying to measure star mass."

"Yeah, that would be awkward," Hill quipped.

"From what recall from the last Council of Realms," Loki responded with a smirk, "it already has been, a few times now."

"Duly noted," Coulson replied dryly. "Well, we'll see you back here, third Saturday in July." He stood up, and Loki followed suit. Then to his surprise, the agent held out a hand. He stared at it for a moment before taking it in his own.

"This may well turn out to everyone's advantage," Coulson said optimistically.

"That was the idea," Loki responded quietly.

What strange times he lived in, Loki thought as Ward escorted him to the end of the hall, where he was handed off to Barton, who gave him his phone back and led him to the elevator. Thor, who was _supposed_ to listen to him, had rarely cared, while this man (whom he'd apparently killed) seemed to actually value his knowledge.

He wasn't sure if it pleased him or just made him horribly sick.


	7. People

School was less painful than Loki had been expecting. Sure, he had to spend the majority of his time sitting in tiny classrooms full of bored humans listening to the same three people explain things, but Resistance in History was mildly interesting, and British Literature was a challenge because with his accent, many of his classmates expected him to already know a lot about the subject. Hating to look inept, Loki flung himself into studying, and actually enjoyed quite a bit of what he read. The topics of the readings weren't usually to his taste, but he appreciated the artistry with which the stories were crafted.

College 101 was, predictably, an utter waste of his time, and he resented it all the more when the professor took half an hour to explain something that Darcy had told him in two minutes, and with more clarity. Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing he could do to exempt himself from that requirement.

"Yeah, I hated it too," Darcy empathized as he lay sprawled on the couch, complaining for the umpteenth time about the six hours per week of his life spent in that classroom. "Bring your tablet—pretend to take notes while actually screwing around on the internet. Guarantee that's what everyone else is doing on their laptops. Or if you want to be an overachiever, you can do your homework for your other classes on the school's Wi-Fi." Loki nodded thoughtfully. The wireless connection in their building was irritatingly slow, and sometimes disagreed with the data on his tablet. The school wasn't that much better, but _any_ better was still an improvement.

Work was hardly difficult—Loki had spent a thousand years being nice to stupid oafs and acting humble when he should probably have been leading them, so customer service was no challenge. The machines were simple, he memorized the recipes during his first shift, and so the only real hurdle was curbing the occasional urge to bash his own brains out at having to say the same mundane things over and over and over again.

With his three classes and four days a week working, Loki was out most of the time. When he had free time, he had homework, plus some write-ups Agent Coulson had requested, and his coworker, Monica, had lent him a copy of a delightfully disturbing book called A Clockwork Orange. He wasn't entirely sure if he liked Monica—but he liked the book, so he smiled and nodded and behaved cordially as she spent the majority of their overlapping shifts relaying gossip about their coworkers that he really could have guessed by looking at them, and didn't particularly care about either way.

The complicated part was relationships.

First, there were his classmates and coworkers. Getting into their good graces was a walk in the park—figuring out how much energy he wanted to spend on any of them was something else entirely. He didn't have a history of close friendships, confined typically to spending his time with Thor's friends, who tolerated him because he was Thor's brother. Without Thor's shadow to hide him, he was free to befriend pretty much anyone—but so many of those who seemed to like him were just the pettiest of petty mortals… it became quickly evident that the majority of others' appreciation for him was a shallow "liking" based on the façade he projected; the _character_ of Luke Randle.

There was hardly anything he could do about it, of course; his choices were to let people like the façade or hate him when they realized who and what he truly was. Either way, his ability to have relationships was doomed—if it had existed to begin with.

Then, there were professors. He got along swimmingly with the little old man who taught his history course—he was pleasant, cordial, and didn't throw his weight around in the classroom. He butted heads a lot with his lit professor on certain interpretive methods, and hated his College 101 professor on principle because of the stupidity of her subject. He'd also run into a professor Ahlström—a little middle-aged Scottish woman with a long curly train of vibrant red hair who taught anthropology, and frequented the local Starbucks at the same times he did. She, at least, was fun to talk to.

Most complex and challenging was romance. It wasn't like he was looking to fall in love and get married—Yggdrasil forbid!—but he wasn't exactly a monk. He'd had his share of flings, but here on earth, as Darcy had noted, everyone found him attractive, which was a relatively new experience. However, the whole gender and sexuality thing was remarkably (and unnecessarily) complicated.

" _Hey," Darcy asked on their third day driving, "do you like girls or guys?"_ _*_

" _Beg pardon?" Loki asked, looking up from the Google rabbit trail he'd lost himself in while she took her turn at the wheel._

" _You know," she responded. "Are you attracted to women, men, both?"_

" _Depends on the person," he shrugged._

" _But does it depend on gender?" she pressed. He shook his head slowly._

" _No, I suppose not," he responded, thinking back on his previous partners and looking for a pattern. On Asgard everyone had considered it one of his many failings, that he seemed interested in such a variety of people, but he knew that in other cultures—Vanaheim and Svartalfheim, in particular—it was actually less common to be attracted to the opposite sex. Of course, their breeding methods were different, and their entire partnering culture was equally different to match, but the point was, he knew it was that way on other worlds. He'd thought he was the only Asgardian like that—when he'd thought he was Asgardian. He wasn't actually sure about the Jotuns—by the time he learned of his true parentage, sexuality was the last thing on his mind._

" _That's another typical human adaptation, is it not?" he inquired with some interest. "That such things vary from one individual to the next?" Darcy nodded, eyes on the road._

" _I mean, it depends on who you ask," she responded. "Some groups—usually religious ones—claim that all humans are heterosexual and cisgender, and condemn anyone who says otherwise. Other groups say it varies from person to person. I'm not sure anybody actually knows how it all works or what causes people to be certain ways. In some places there's a cultural stigma, in other places there isn't. It's definitely a 'handle with care' subject, depending on who you're with. Unless you don't care what people think about you for it—just know that you might have to deal with some assholes poking their noses into your business if you broadcast it."_

" _Noted," he responded. "So, Darcy," he added, "do you like men or women? Or both?"_

" _I like men," she laughed. "The ones with good ab muscles—and freckles. I have a thing for freckles. I wish my boyfriend had 'em, but nobody's perfect."_

" _Boyfriend is… a lover, not a committed partner?" he guessed._

" _Again, depends on the person," she explained. "Some people have kids together and buy houses together as boyfriend and girlfriend, and for other people the words just mean that they're in some kind of relationship. Jeff and I have been together for about a year now, sort of casually. I spent the last semester traveling with Jane and doing online classes, so we've been kinda' doing the long-distance thing. Do you… did you have someone back home?" she faltered as she asked, and he could tell she was trying to be delicate, knowing that this could be quite the landmine if the answer was yes._

" _No," he responded, shaking his head. "I was never really close with anyone emotionally—never really did the whole courting thing. I'm not really the 'settling-down' type." He left out the bits about how Asgardians rarely found him particularly attractive, in body or in person—and how difficult it was for him to establish an identity beyond "Thor's little brother."_

" _Gotcha," Darcy responded casually. "Well, you'll do great in college, I gotta say," she snorted. "Bunch of horny, no-strings-attached-please people, plus your accent, not to mention your face, now that the mop of hair's gone," she added. He glared at her, but she ignored him. "You'll fit right in."_

And she'd been right—maybe a little _too_ right. His hearing was better than the average human's, so he could make out quite clearly what many of his classmates whispered about him—mostly the women, but a few of the men as well. He was also perceptive enough to notice when people were attracted to him, of course, and would have assumed that was just how all humans acted if Darcy hadn't explained that he looked and sounded good to them. He was pretty sure he'd already ruined a friendship between two girls who both wanted into his pants. All of this, and he hadn't even slept with any of them yet!

Then there was Nina. Nina sat next to him in College 101 and found the class equally useless. She was witty, sarcastic and dominant, taking charge during projects and daring anyone to cross her with a flash of competitiveness in her eyes and an assertive fold of her arms across her well-endowed chest. She had warm, olive-toned skin and thick brown curls, adorning a slim, tight body honed through years of volleyball and swimming. As mortals went, he'd think with a smirk as his eyes lingered on her during a boring lecture, she was quite lovely.

But of course, the most complex relationship was his friendship with Darcy.

Sometimes she seemed incredibly clever, breaking apart the inconsistencies of her culture and speaking so eloquently about power and leadership and justice.

Other times the mortal talked wildly to herself, tearing apart the contents of her room to find something—usually by the time he asked him if he'd seen it, whatever it was turned out to have been in her purse or on the kitchen table the whole time. She apparently couldn't abide silence—when she wasn't talking, she always had music playing, or the TV on. She owned about thirty hats, and four pairs of glasses, but whenever she was getting ready to leave, she could somehow never find a single hat or pair of glasses.

She waited tables every night, took two day classes, taught him "Midgard 101," but still couldn't pronounce Mjolnir (although he was getting the impression she was doing it on purpose) and would vary between intellectual inquiries about Asgardian culture and government and some of the most off-the-wall questions he could imagine.

She'd ask him whether he had trouble getting through doorways wearing "that stupid helmet" (only on Midgard, where doorways were unnaturally small) or if he'd actually slept with a horse (no! And why, out of all the weird myths about him, were the mortals so obsessed with _that_ one?) or what was the weirdest thing he'd ever eaten (he'd had to think about that one—probably pickled Om'irpo eggs from the western continent of Niflheim). Were there any aliens that actually looked "like aliens?" She'd shown him a picture of some bipedal creatures with green skin and huge black eyes. They reminded him vaguely of a few different species, which he drew to the best of his ability, but she wasn't satisfied with any of them—and none of them were from the vicinity of Mars, to her great disappointment.

By the end of his first month, he'd decided that Darcy was a bit mad, but had realized that he actually rather liked that about her. She was very blunt, and very open, but not in the same abrasive, obstinate way as Thor and his ilk. She just… was what she was. And that was refreshing.

Then there were the nightmares.

In prison, he'd kept himself under rigid control, barely sleeping, and when he did, not allowing himself to move or cry out no matter what his mind plagued him with. Then in his first few weeks of freedom, he'd been so busy, so distracted, and his mind had shut down into calming, restful blackness when he would finally fall into bed, wrapped soothingly in the heavy knitted green blanket.

But now that he was settling, now that his life among the mortals was becoming routine, his subconscious was seeing fit to torment him with vivid half-recollections. Sometimes he dreamed of fire and agony and the blurry faces of unknown captors. Other times it was slightly more concrete visions of his last week as prince and king of Asgard, the moment when his skin turned blue and a simple plan to show father why Thor was not only unworthy but unsafe for the throne had spiraled instantly out of control, ripping through everything he thought he knew and sending him into a sickening spiral of despair. Often he dreamed of falling—of lying on the Bifrost and realizing that he'd stepped off the metaphorical edge, and then letting himself fall off the physical edge minutes later, his life in scraps around him, irrevocably destroyed… that one always had him waking up gasping.

Sometimes his mind would try to piece together the horrors he'd committed while influenced by his captors—sometimes it made sense, things like killing Coulson or fighting Thor. But other times he couldn't distinguish fact from hideous fiction. Strangling Barton, ripping the Man of Iron's heart from his chest, killing the lady Jane a dozen different ways, always with Thor watching, always screaming in horror, begging his once-brother to kill him instead. Then he'd kill Thor—that was when he'd wake up screaming.

The first two times, Darcy had gotten up too, awakening when she heard the noise. He'd mumbled excuses and told her to go back to bed. The third time, she'd stayed up, turning on the TV and wordlessly inviting him to join her. For all her goofiness and bluntness about so many things, she was surprisingly compassionate and understanding about the nightmares. Once she'd said cryptically that the mind was a powerful force, and dangerous when left unattended. But she'd followed up by prattling about Sherlock or something like that, generally sounding very Darcy. He wasn't sure what to make of it, but he'd eaten a bowl of ice cream and drank a cup of tea in front of an episode of Cold Case, then gotten a few more hours of sleep—fitful, but thankfully unbroken until his alarm returned him to consciousness.

Of all the relationships in his new life, the one Loki hated most was the one with himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Read the myths, guys—and not the kid versions, the real ones. Loki kinda' slept with everybody—and both mothered and fathered children. This is canon. Incidentally, since the comic book versions have a different history than the mythical versions of these characters, and I'm kind of blending the two based largely on Hiddleston's performance in the movies, Loki is pansexual as in the myths, but identifies as a man and has not been married or had any children, which I think is comic canon, and in keeping with the way Hiddleston played the character (in my opinion).


	8. Enemies

Loki wasn't one to be distracted. He was clever, perceptive, and always one step ahead. Darcy's defense of her theory that he was mind-controlled during the invasion included the fact that the plan was far too simplistic, not brilliant enough to be something he'd come up with. And she was right.

But that morning, before he'd left for his third debriefing with Coulson, he'd listened in on a long, loud, angry conversation between Darcy and her boyfriend—a nondescript blond with too-long bangs and a drawling voice that he found incredibly grating. He wasn't totally sure what they were arguing about—he wasn't sure THEY were sure what they were arguing about, although living arrangements had come up once or twice—and in the back of his mind he'd been trying to pick it apart. He'd been so engrossed by his thoughts on the subject that he'd barely been aware of his surroundings—and that was when they'd grabbed him.

He'd smelled something like rancid lemon juice on a rough cloth they held over his mouth and nose, and the world became sickeningly foggy. Time blurred, and he came around in a moving vehicle, his hands bound behind him, something tied over his eyes. He let his body sprawl limply, not wanting to alert his captors to his state of wakefulness until he'd come up with a suitable solution to the problem at hand.

The vehicle sounded large, and there were at least three distinct voices. They were driving over uneven terrain—more so than city street potholes—and traveling pretty fast. He could hear the engine laboring to keep up with the driver's hurry. The voices around him spoke in English, so he assumed they were human. His first guess was they were SHIELD operatives, as they'd accosted him within the restricted area of the building. And at least one of them had to be fairly high level, to have either clearance to use a back exit or not to arouse suspicion carrying him, unconscious, through the front.

However, they weren't the highest level agents, because they were clearly doing this without SHIELD's consent—otherwise, he'd have woken up somewhere more secure and convenient, such as one of their many cells or interrogation rooms. That meant they wanted something from him other than what SHIELD was already getting out of the bargain that Darcy had struck. Possibly they simply sought to punish him for the invasion—what an unbearably dull motive—or possibly they wanted to force his help for a coup of some sort—more interesting, but still problematic, as he would have to say no in order to preserve his standing with SHIELD, and they wouldn't like that.

Either way, he got the ominous feeling that this was going to hurt.

-0-

"I just don't like that you're living with a guy, Baby," Jeff grumbled, sitting huffily on Darcy's bed while she sat on her bean-bag, arms and legs crossed, not looking at him.

"You didn't have a problem with Keenan staying here," she reminded him.

"Yeah, but I know Keenan, and you're not his type," Jeff complained. "I know he's not checking you out. I don't know this guy at all, and you never talked about him before, now suddenly you're besties, and he moved in, and I hadn't seen you in a while… makes a guy wonder, y'know?"

"Well, it wouldn't if you _trusted_ me," Darcy reminded him crisply. "I told you, he's been backpacking across Europe for years, his foster family kicked him out, he was living with his brother and wanted to move here for school. His brother's dating a friend of mine, so we got introduced through the grapevine. We're not 'besties;' we just both needed a roommate."

"So why don't you move in with _me_ , Baby?" Jeff pushed. "Cole's moving out at the end of the month, we can turn his room into an office or a den, Luke can find some other dude to take your room, everybody wins!"

"I'm not leaving my apartment," Darcy snapped. "We've had this conversation before. I _like_ having some independence—in situations like this one, when I need some space, I can kick your ass out of my building. You're approaching that point, by the way," she warned him.

"Oh, _that's_ encouraging," Jeff shot back sarcastically.

"Hey, it is what it is," Darcy shrugged. "I come back after working my ass off with an internship, we get to see each other again for the first time in months, and all you give a crap about is my roommate and wanting me to move in? Yeah, I'm _really_ feelin' the urge to get all lovey-dovey and share a kitchen right about now."

"I can't deal with this right now," Jeff muttered, running a hand roughly through his hair and standing up.

"And finally, we agree on something," Darcy hissed as her boyfriend sauntered out of her room and down the hall. Once she heard the front door close, she slid forward, flinging her body back so that she was half sitting on the floor, half laying on the bean bag. Then she crossed her arms over her eyes and took a deep breath.

The whole time she'd been gone, Mia Howell had been tagging him on Facebook multiple times a day, acting like she was trying to elbow Darcy out, but had Darcy complained about that bitch? Not once. 'Cause there was this thing that couple did called trusting each other, so she trusted Jeff not to cheat on her even if Mia-freaking-Howell dropped her panties right in front of him, because he was a grown man and capable of thinking with his upstairs brain if he really put his mind to it.

But Loki, who she'd assured Jeff had no interest in her, _Loki_ was a problem. _That_ wasn't a double-standard or anything…

Rolling up onto her elbow, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and shot Loki a text message, asking how long he was going to be "with Mrs. Hanson," which was the code word for meeting SHIELD people. If he was going to be there super late again, then she was going out for sushi, dagnabbit. But if he was on his way back, then maybe she'd order takeout Chinese for both of them and put on Harry Potter—the next item on "Loki's List of Pop-Culture Necessities OF DOOM."

Shortly after sending the message, she remembered that he'd mentioned they took his phone at the door. But if they took it, then _someone_ had it, so she decided to take a chance and call. Worst case scenario, it was in a locker somewhere…

-0-

Letting his captors get him to wherever they were going couldn't possibly end well, Loki decided after a few minutes of bouncing around limply. They were clearly leaving the city, and the more secluded they were, the more danger he'd be in. He gathered information, using the jolts of going over rougher patches to subtly test the strength of his bonds, and letting himself slide when they hit the brakes, face pressed painfully into the floor to "accidentally" slide up his blindfold. After a little effort he was able to free one of his hands, carefully draping it behind him so he still looked bound, and then all that was left was to listen for his opportunity.

"What's that?" one of the men asked, and Loki tensed, lying determinedly still and hoping he hadn't seen that his captive was free. Then he realized he heard a phone buzzing, and relaxed a little.

"Call from Darcy—who's Darcy? Tell me this alien freak doesn't have a girlfriend." Loki tensed again instantly. They wouldn't bring her into this, would they? Not just from a phone call…

"Nah," responded a voice that he recognized as agent Jackson's. "She's his babysitter—this civilian chick he lives with. She's helping him blend in with the humans."

"Traitor bitch," another voice spat.

"Yeah," Jackson continued, "she's basically the one who got him out, I heard."

"When we're done with this one, we should pay her a visit," the first voice growled.

Even with his eyes closed, Loki saw red.

He flicked his eyes open, taking in the interior of the big van and the positioning of his three captors at a glance. Then before any of them could even notice the change, he rolled, pivoting on his shoulder and side to twist his legs under one of the men, who was standing near him, keeping guard, while the other two occupied seats. He dropped with a cry of shock and Loki rolled over, smashing an elbow into his face, breaking his nose and knocking him out.

The second man was seated with his back to the driver, and he bolted upright, taking a fighting stance and shouting out a warning as Loki rolled up to his feet. He was dizzy and disoriented, but rage coursed through his veins like ice water, forcibly clearing his head and providing him with several options for how to most effectively dismantle and maim this unworthy human scum.

The van screeched to a halt by the side of the road while Loki grappled with the second agent, throwing sharp, quick jabs to his weak points—his joints, solar plexus and neck—to knock him off balance and force him to defend his core, leaving his legs open to attack. With a powerful sweep of his right foot, Loki took the agent out at the knees, and jumped on top of him, holding him down and ramming his fist into the man's face.

It was right about then that Loki lost the upper hand.

The driver had, by this time, exited the front door of the van and was moving to fling open the back door so that he could join the fight. The agent beneath Loki kneed him in the groin so hard he saw stars, and then bashed his fist into the side of the Jotun's head, knocking him aside and allowing the bloody and bruised agent to take his place on top, fists raining down in a painful hail. Ordinarily, this would be where Loki would use magic to craft an illusion and confuse his attacker, but without that option, he found himself helpless beneath the onslaught to his face and chest.

"Get off of him," Jackson—the driver—instructed quickly, and the punching agent rolled to the side just in time for Jackson to pull the trigger on what Loki recognized as a Taser, like Darcy's. At the last second, he rolled to the side, dodging the electrodes, but he couldn't get back onto his feet; he was pressed too close into the wall, and the other agent began kicking him in the stomach and side.

"You! Bastard!" the agent shouted as he landed kick after kick. "You! Killed! My! Sister!"

"Here, gimmie some space," Jackson said after the agent seemed to tire. Loki saw through his fast swelling eyes that the man had removed part of the Taser—the part with the unraveled wires—and now had a black rectangle with a little arc of blue electricity in his hand.

"See," he said conversationally as he pressed the arc of lightning to an exposed patch of flesh on Loki's stomach. Loki screamed as the pain coursed through his whole body. His bones were melting, he was on fire, and he couldn't move. "You destroyed a lot of lives, you hurt people, you killed people, your army broke down buildings, killed children… And now you get to just go live your life? My boss pays your tuition, while my friends are dead in a ditch? And do you know why they're dead?" he took the horrible device away for a moment, and Loki gasped desperately for air.

"Do you?" he repeated. "Why do you think they're dead, huh?" Loki's panting sobs were apparently not answer enough, because he electrocuted him again. "They're dead because YOU took over their minds, and their BROTHERS IN ARMS had to kills them. And then it turns out a little bump on the head, and everybody's fine. How _convenient_!" he pulled away again, letting Loki catch his breath.

"And they bring back Coulson, and they save Barton and Selvig, but the rest of us can just suck it up, right?" he hissed, and the pain returned and took Loki's breath away. "And you! You caused all of this, and you just get to go free, no slap on the wrist, no need to feel any of the pain you caused?

I don't think so."


	9. Rescue

" _Why do you continue to resist, little godling?" a deep, deceptively soothing voice murmured in his ear. Loki's entire body was rigid, his teeth clenched, caging his tongue and holding in every peep of noise. But he couldn't stop the tears from flowing down his face. "There is no escape… no one is coming to save you… they rejected you, cast you out, abandoned you…" A huge gauntleted hand gripped his jaw, turning his head and forcing him to look in a dirty, cracked mirror. He surveyed his reflection with a sort of detached horror. His blue skin was patched calico with vibrant indigo burns, and he was spattered with nearly black blood._

" _You're a monster," the voice mused almost tenderly. "A broken little monster—with no hope of rescue. Just… this." Loki bit down on his tongue as a glowing hot iron was pressed into his stomach. "Just endless pain and torment, for the rest of your days, unless you open up that nimble little mind of yours, and let. Me. In…"_

Loki came back to reality in stilted waves, the sound of his memory fading into the sounds of the world around him like a radio leaving the range for one station and blending disjointedly into the next.

"We deed do ged oud ob the oben," the agent whose nose he'd broken announced, and he heard the other two shuffling around, one of them climbing out, most likely to get in the driver's seat. This was still pretty bad… he did _not_ want to get as far as a secluded area, but he'd given up the element of surprise in a fit of temper, and now his body was thoroughly trounced, and moving quickly would be much more challenging.

He couched wetly, spitting out a mouthful of blood and feeling the tiniest spark of triumph that it still appeared bright red. So he wasn't too far gone yet; the illusion of human appearance still lingered around him.

Around him?

He'd never thought deeply about it—once he became aware of the spell and that he was maintaining it consciously, he'd just continued to maintain it. He didn't want to be a monster. But right about now, a little monstrosity was fitting.

And he had enough magic to maintain an illusion.

That meant he had enough magic to _make_ an illusion—if he took it off.

Loki inhaled, steeling himself. He was hurt and exhausted, and he'd never done this before; he'd removed the illusion once or twice, but never taken it off, changed it around and moved it. He waited until the man with the broken nose had taken the seat with his back to the driver, and Jackson had taken his place standing over him. Through lidded eyes, he watched the gun strapped to the standing agent's thigh, waiting for the little shifts of posture that brought it closer to him.

Then with another deep breath, he acted.

He rolled to the middle of the van, like he was trying to get up again, then as the one with the broken nose stood, he forced the illusion away from himself with an almighty heave and flung it in front of the car, in the shape of what he thought might have been the man's dead sister—if not, it was a female SHIELD agent, he was sure of it.

As he predicted, the driver slammed on the brakes, throwing the other two off balance and slamming them forward. Loki snatched the gun out of Jackson's thigh holster, his free hand wrapped in a seatbelt-type strap laying across the floor, which he used to yank himself in the opposite direction from the falling agents—towards the back door.

He got the latch open and barreled out as they scrambled to their feet, and took the second to slam the doors closed on them before pelting off to the left of the roadway. He'd been right; they were outside the city, driving along a gravel road bordered by farmland on one side and woodland on the other. Not wanting to be an easy target, he opted to run into the woods. His lungs were in agony, and his stomach felt like it was one huge, throbbing bruise, which extended over his sides, and a bit up his chest. His face was a mottled mess, he knew, and the arm he'd dragged himself with was dislocated at the shoulder.

And he was deep, Jotun blue, having exhausted his meagre magic for the time being with that trick.

They were hot on his heels in moments, and he zig-zagged through the trees, looking for somewhere he could hide with the gun, and shoot at them with some protection from them shooting back. He knew he didn't have it in him to run for long, but he couldn't settle on just hiding behind a tree—he needed to find better cover before he lost momentum or they caught up. He thanked the Norns that humans had such short legs, but he thought he also probably had a broken rib or two, and his injuries were badly hampering him.

Finally he found a place where two trees grew close together, their low-hanging branches creating a dark hollow. With his skin dark blue and the cool tones of dusk in the air, the shadows should camouflage him excellently; he ducked in, took a painful gulp of air, then clapped a hand over his mouth to hold in his pants as the agents caught up to him a moment later. He trained the gun on one of them, waiting for them to notice him, not wanting to give away his position just in case they missed him.

"Shit!" one of them hissed.

"Kowalski, go left!" Jackson ordered, running off to his right. "Pembroke, straight ahead. Holler if you catch sight of him. Big blue freak!"

It took everything in Loki not to pull the trigger as anger boiled deep in his belly again, but self-preservation won out, and he watched the agents split up and run off in three different directions. Once the sound of their footsteps faded, he dropped his hand, finally gasping for precious oxygen and trying not to sob as the movement aggravated his ribs. He glanced down at his hand, which was quickly lightening back to its facetious Caucasian tone.

Then, knowing he didn't have much time before they realized their mistake, and knowing that he stuck out in the gloom with his fair skin, he crept out from his shelter and headed back towards the road as quickly as he could. The last thing they'd expect would be for him to immediately return to the van, and if they'd been in a big enough hurry, they might not have taken the keys out of the ignition. At least he could retrieve his phone from where he'd seen it in the cup holder and call the authorities. But as soon as he reached the van, headlights blazed into view, and three cars had screeched to a halt around him. He hid the gun casually behind his leg, squinting into the harsh light.

Doors slammed open, and a familiar silhouette was running towards him.

"Oh my god," Darcy exclaimed. "What happened?" Loki's eyes adjusted and he discerned Coulson and Ward's shapes as well.

"SHIELD has some bad apples," he wheezed. "Wait, how did you find me?" How long had he been missing? He didn't think it was more than an hour…

"I _find-my-lost-iPhone_ 'd your phone after Agent C. called and asked if you made it back," she responded, eyes roving over him, taking in his injuries. She looked concerned; her face was unnaturally pale, and she'd even left the house without a hat. "Are you okay? What the hell happened to you?"

"We scuffled," he responded with a painful shrug. It was humiliating to admit that three puny humans had gotten the jump on him and been able to hurt him so severely.

"There he—oh, shi—" Jackson's cry of triumph turned into an exclamation of horror when he took in the people surrounding Loki.

"Agents Jackson, Kowalski and Pembroke," Coulson announced, "you are hereby under arrest for assault, battery and kidnapping." SHIELD agents moved forward to take the three men into custody as the exited the forest.

"And not even that clever of a kidnapping," Loki quipped, unable to help himself. Jackson lunged forward in anger, and then dropped shaking to the gravel-covered ground as Darcy instinctively Tased him. Although Loki resented the need to be rescued and avenged like some distressing damsel, he couldn't help but appreciate the justice of it.

Of course, he reasoned, his mood darkening, if justice was really to be served, then he probably deserved everything they gave him and more. Of course, he'd been forced to do everything he did, and he barely even remembered it, but that didn't make their loved ones any less dead. And then… there was the fact that he _knew_ his mind was unbreachable. Someone couldn't have just broken in and taken him out for a spin. He didn't know how—didn't know what tortures they'd had to subject him to—but he knew that at some point, he must've consented. So… was all that blood on _his_ hands?

He truly didn't know.

And he didn't much like not knowing.

-0-

"Take it easy for a couple of days—no lifting or running," the little English Dr. Simmons instructed him calmly as the bandaged the last of his bleeding wounds.

"And remember, tell people you were mugged and got your wallet stolen," Ward added. "We created a 911 transcript for public records if anybody decides to check up on it.

"Understood," Loki responded tonelessly. The day had lengthened into a week at least, and it wasn't even ten o'clock at night yet. First the drama with Darcy and Jeff to which he'd been privy, then a long day of explaining to Coulson and his team how to build what Coulson's favorite engineer kept refereeing to as "space death rays." Then he'd been kidnapped, beaten, escaped, rescued, debriefed, and had Simmons patch him up. He desperately wanted to return to the apartment and pass out for twelve hours at least. Mercifully, Darcy seemed to have the same idea, because as soon as he struggled to her feet, she was at his side, ducking under his uninjured arm to support him.

"C'mon," she said, taking some of his weight. "Your car is still in the lot. Let's go."

However, at that moment thunder cracked so loudly outside that they could hear it even in the basement SHIELD base.

" _Tell_ me you did not contact _Thor_ ," Loki hissed, glaring daggers at Coulson.

"I contacted Thor," Coulson responded flatly.

" _Why_?" he demanded tersely. Darcy leaned into him, helping him sit back down on Simmons's examination table.

"Your location is a matter of global security," Coulson explained. "We didn't know if you'd been kidnapped, bolted, run across more alien individuals, or something else entirely. I contacted Thor in case we needed help either rescuing you or apprehending you."

The lights flickered as the storm worsened overhead, then the thunder stopped, leaving only the white noise of pelting rain.

"Well, that was premature of you on all counts," he sighed moodily as loud, rushing footsteps approached and the door flew open, banging loudly against the wall.

"Brother!" Thor exclaimed, striding in and dropping Mjolnir and his sodden cape on a chair. "What has befallen you? Are you well?"

"Talk to Coulson—he's the one who called you," Loki grumbled.

"Hey," Darcy muttered. "Be nice—he really freaked out."

"He wouldn't have _freaked out_ if no one had called him!" Loki muttered back, still glaring at Coulson out of the corner of his eyes. The agent stood calmly, Loki's foul mood rolling off him like rain off a windshield.

"What has happened?" Thor demanded, reaching him and holding up a huge hand as if to touch his younger brother's bruised and swollen face.

"Don't _touch_ them, oaf!" he reprimanded, jerking back, and Thor looked ashamed of himself and dropped his hand. "There was a little scuffle," Loki sighed. "It's all been sorted, nothing further to discuss. These will have healed by the end of the week. You can go back to your lady friend now." He looked for Darcy to help extract him and get to the car, but she'd moved towards the door, following Simmons and Coulson as they all slipped out to give the two demigods some privacy.

'Traitor,' Loki thought venomously at her, narrowing his eyes.

"Brother," Thor started again, and if looks could kill, he would have been dead on the floor. He sighed. "Loki," he amended, sitting down on the examination table beside him. "I am worried for you."

"I'm not going to destroy your beloved earth," Loki snapped. "SHIELD was right in assuming that I cannot afford to make an enemy of the only planet willing to shelter me."

"I am worried for _you_ ," Thor repeated emphatically, stressing the last word and placing his hands—gently, Loki noticed—on the slighter man's shoulders. "Living among so many who might consider themselves your enemies, without your magic… I wish you had stayed nearer me and Jane."

"That would somewhat defeat the purpose of anonymity," Loki reminded him. "You're not exactly subtle." Thunder rumbled again, and he raised an eyebrow—a movement which hurt more than he expected, and he had to carefully suppress a resulting groan of pain. "Besides, I can handle myself."

"I know," Thor admitted miserably. "Nevertheless, I still desire to protect you, broth—" he sighed in frustration as the word kept escaping his mouth. Loki remained silent, having nothing to say that was important enough to bear the increased pain in his ribs.

"You were this way even in our youth," Thor rumbled quietly. "Always running off on your own, never letting me keep you safe. Why? I understand… I know you consider us enemies now," he added haltingly, "but… why then?" Loki exhaled slowly, staring determinedly at the hem of Thor's cape, which trailed off of the chair and onto the floor. Thor released him and turned to face forward again.

"Because," Loki responded evenly, "I did not want anyone to be able to say that I needed protecting. I was already looked down upon and despised for how I looked, how I acted, my magic… I refused—and still refuse—to give them one more thing for which to ridicule me." He expected Thor to defend his friends and their neighbors, but when he glanced to the side, he saw that Thor was hanging his head, hands intertwined limply in his lap.

The defeated aura was an unfamiliar look on him. Ordinarily, he would have either blustered about how Loki was overreacting, or, if he'd taken the smaller man's side, raged about how he was going to solve the problem by hitting people with Mjolnir until they agreed with him. But Thor was different now, Loki realized belatedly. He was… older? More perceptive? He wasn't sure how to define it—and wasn't totally certain he liked it.

He remembered that last terrible day on Asgard, when Thor returned just as he'd finally killed Laufey and was about to destroy Jotunheim—wipe from existence the monsters like him because it seemed somehow preferable to simply destroying himself for being one. He remembered how Thor had tried so uncharacteristically to reason with him, how he'd refused to fight back even when Loki had struck him over and over. It had thrown him, in the midst of his mad spiral of despair and violence, that the image he had of the big, unworthy brute somehow didn't fit the familiar face standing before him. He'd pushed and pushed, finally threatening Jane, just to force Thor back into being the way he remembered him.

Because if he were to acknowledge that Thor had changed, then he would have to look at himself next; would have to see the monster staring back at him in the mirror.

But… Thor _had_ changed. He remembered vaguely Thor begging him several times to stop the madness of his invasion before it was too late—trying desperately to reason with him, genuinely not wanting to use violence, trying to save him even when he was—as far as they knew—the one everyone else needed protection _from_. It was unfortunate for the both of them that he could not have stopped if he'd wanted to, at that point.

He breathed out a quiet laugh.

"Ironic, is it not?" he murmured. "My plan to supplant you because you were unfit for the throne _made you_ fit for the throne. I suppose you'll actually make a decent king now."

"Oh, Brother," Thor moaned, turning to face him again, "I would relinquish the throne and all of my titles in a heartbeat to have you back!" Loki froze at the sudden, bald-faced admission. Thor was an open, honest person, incapable of any real deception, so he had no doubt that the bigger man spoke the truth. And upon closer inspection, Thor's blue eyes were watering heavily, tears threatening to spill over onto his miserable face.

For once in his life, Loki was speechless.


	10. Her

The summer semester ended, and Loki found himself, for the first time, with two weeks of relative freedom; nothing to do with himself other than getting to and from work and cooking every other night, alternating with Darcy. The right side bedroom was actually starting to look a little more like _his_ bedroom; he'd begun to acquire personal effects (mostly books… actually, almost all books) to fill up the space. He'd bought more clothes—some black jeans and more shirts, favoring the kind with buttons, either the semi-formal ones with a folded over collar, or the casual "Henley" type.

Darcy had started teasing him about being a "sticky note addict," but he was fascinated with the simple mortal invention. As a child, he'd developed the habit of writing in books, recording his opinions when he read, and Frigga had encouraged him to do this, saying that it helped him organize his thoughts better. However, Odin had been upset at him defacing the books in the royal library, and he had seen the old man's point. He'd resorted to using a journal, but then he'd had to carry it around with him, which was cumbersome, and he couldn't then leave the thoughts _with_ the book. With sticky notes, however, he could take notes on anything without ruining a single thing, and had plastered his book collection with them, as well as using them to leave himself reminders all over the room.

Then there was Nina. One decent night of passion in a back room at his first college party had led to an unexpected amount of confusion, attachment and unwelcome drama. Apparently, what had been for him an average hookup had been for her the best lay of her life—unsurprising, he unabashedly admitted—and she'd changed her priorities from one-night-stand to moving into the girlfriend zone. Assuming that this was normal for mortals, he'd gone along with it, taking her to the movies and out to dinner, having sex in cars and on rooftops and anywhere exciting, really.

However, it became evident quickly that she wanted more commitment than he had planned. He was taking 21 credit hours—Darcy was horrified—working 25-30 hours per week—Darcy was still horrified—and now Nina seemed to want him to spend his every waking moment with her. Work and school he could handle, but the unexpected clinginess of such a normally independent woman was a bit much for him to deal with. It didn't help that the persona of Luke had become a bit of a yes-man—he was still learning all the rules and customs here on Midgard, so he didn't yet know how many he could violate before he'd gone too far—so getting some proverbial elbow room was proving immensely difficult.

"You don't sound like you like her—even a little bit," Darcy commented as she lounged on the couch and he lay sprawled sideways on the chair, discussing—"bitching about," according to Darcy—his relationship with Nina. Seeing as she'd been the one to unflinchingly explain the uses of a condom, he had no trouble at all opening up to her about his romantic woes.

"I used to like her just fine," he grumbled. "Then suddenly she's trying to suck the life out of me, physically and mentally. That I don't like."

"Do you even want to be dating her in the first place?" Darcy asked.

"No," he laughed.

"Then why not dump her?" she pressed.

"Because is that something that _polite English gentleman_ 'Luke' would do?" he shot back in exasperation.

"You're being too nice," Darcy quipped. "Be a dick once or twice—everyone does it. It's not like SHIELD's going to arrest you for unloading an unwanted girlfriend."

"Last time I dropped the façade and 'was a dick,'" he returned dryly, "I almost committed genocide—and practically killed Thor. I believe you were there for that one."

"Moderation!" Darcy exclaimed, flinging a pillow at him, which he caught. "Jeez, come on, a little discernment here. You won't magically turn into a world-destroying douche bag just because you need some personal space. There's a difference." Loki fell silent for a long moment, contemplating that. Darcy was surprised—she'd thought it was the most obvious concept in the world.

"I suppose," he mused after a while, "I've never been very good at balance. Nothing I did ever seemed like enough, so I always went too far, bottled up any discomfort I felt until it turned to rage." His voice was a little rougher than usual, and his eyes were fixed on a point near the linens closet, clearly unfocused.

"Out of everyone you've met on earth so far," Darcy asked after it became evident that he was still lost in a time long past. "Do you actually like any of them? Are there any that you'd actually _want_ to spend time with, just 'cause?" he didn't move, but she saw his pupils shift as his eyes focused back in on the world around him.

"You," he responded, then paused thoughtfully.

"Rowena Ahlström," he listed next, naming his professor friend that he'd grabbed lunch with a few times (before Nina started teleporting to his location whenever he got a break between classes). Darcy had seen her in the hallways and had a few conversations in passing with her. She was sharp-witted and clever—very Scottish, and a little 'out there.' Taught anthropology and occult studies, and so many of UC's students referred to her (fondly) as the Wicked Witch.

"Will Mauring," Loki continued—Will was one of his coworkers; a hard-core anime devotee who spent the majority of his salary on supplies to make his own costumes for the many conventions he attended. He was jolly and would make conversation with anyone, and always had something interesting to say, even if it was pretty off-the-wall most of the time.

"Phil Coulson," Loki concluded, his tone indicating that he'd reached the end of the list.

"Coulson?" Darcy echoed in surprise, twisting around to look at him without sitting up.

"Nothing fazes him," Loki explained with a light laugh. "His combination of calmness and dry wit make him enjoyable to be around, especially since most of our conversations are things that would frighten average mortals."

"Huh," Darcy commented, nodding thoughtfully. That made sense. "Glad I made the list," she added with a snort. "Look. Trying to get everyone to like you is a giant waste of time. I know you don't want to make waves when SHIELD is watching you like a hawk, but nobody expects you to be a saint. You should focus on the people you actually _like_ , and just settle for being civil to everyone else. A good rule of thumb is 'do no harm, but take no shit.'"

"Sounds deep and philosophical," Loki quipped sarcastically, but pursed his lips, rolling that phrase over in his head. Then his eyes lit on Darcy's homework pile, and her criminal psych textbook.

"Are you 'shrinking me' right now?" he demanded, only half-serious. He could hardly fault her for using her career skills, he supposed.

"I'm _friending_ you, you ass!" she snapped back, chucking the other little toss pillow at him. He caught it as well, and stuffed both pillows under his back, propping himself up a little further in the nest he'd made for himself in the chair. Darcy stuck her tongue out, then grabbed the remote and flipped on the TV, turning on CSI for background noise while she halfheartedly studied for her first test of the semester.

"Hey, gimmie my pillows back," she asked after a moment, squirming around to look back at him.

"Not if you're going to call me an ass," he responded flippantly, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

" _Please_ can I have my pillows back?" she asked in a passable imitation of sweetness, but with a glint in her eyes that contradicted everything coming out of her mouth.

"Get me an ice cream first," he demanded pettishly. She narrowed her eyes, but stood up, then abruptly changed direction, heading into her room and returning with an armload of pillows from her bed.

"Your move, Mischief Managed," she smirked. He mock-glared at her, then stood as well, entering the kitchen and emerging a moment later with ice cream. The whole remaining half a gallon. With a spoon stuck right in the middle.

"Whoa, whoa, no," she backtracked. "Hand that over, mister, you gotta share!"

"Well fetch a spoon, then," he responded, his words a little garbled because his mouth was already full of frozen mint chocolate perfection.

-0-

Jeff dumped Darcy over text at around two the next morning.

Loki had gotten up in the middle of the night to grab a glass of water and found her curled up on the floor in the living room, her back to the couch, phone gripped in nerveless fingers. She wasn't crying per say, but her eyes had a reddish tint to them suggesting that either she already had or would, at some point in the not so distant future. Guessing the problem, Loki wordlessly sat down on the floor beside her, and she handed him her phone so he could read the needlessly dramatic text.

It was a bluff, of course—Darcy already knew it without Loki bringing it up. Jeff wanted to force her hand, make her desperate to get him back so she'd agree to his terms about their living situation.

"It's not even about that," she sighed, voice coming out rough but strong. "I was gone for a long time, long distance sucked, now he thinks we're going to make up for lost time, 'cause it's not like I have a life to live outside of him, or anything. He doesn't like that I don't want to spend all my time hanging out with his friends or going to his stuff—I don't want to be 'we people.'" She swallowed thickly and cleared her throat.

"We've been falling apart for a while now," she admitted with a shrug, taking her phone back and locking it. "If we weren't, this," here she gestured between herself and Loki, "wouldn't be a problem." She sniffed, then casually rubbed at her eyes. Loki sighed quietly, then, noticing the tight set of her neck and the hunch of her shoulders, stated to gently massage the back of her neck with his long fingers.

"Do you _want_ him back?" he asked. Inexperienced with having his own relationships as he was, he certainly knew his way around getting other people to do what he wanted. Jeff wasn't that complex, and Darcy was sharper than anyone gave her credit for. He was reasonably confident he could coach her through pushing the right buttons. But she shook her head.

"If I have to play games and manipulate him—if I have to do shit like _this_ ," she added, holding up her phone and glaring at it, "then the relationship isn't worth it. Thanks, though." She sniffed again, leaning subtly into his hand, appreciating the little physical comfort.

-0-

As it turned out, the actual breakup was nowhere near being the difficult part. Jeff started hanging around the outside of Darcy's classrooms, posting social media messages with double meanings, spreading rumors about her and generally making as much of an ass of himself as possible.

Although Darcy was armed with her Taser and perfectly capable of handling herself, there began to be an unspoken agreement among her close friends that she didn't go anywhere on campus alone. They'd surround her in little knots of conversation, casually walking her to classes so that if Jeff wanted to say anything he'd have to say it to the whole group. It wasn't that any of them thought she was in any bodily danger, but they were concerned about how many confrontations she'd have to endure until the whole thing would blow over.

It was a tribute to how run down she was by the whole thing that she didn't complain more than once or twice about them "guarding her like she was queen freakin' Elizabeth." She'd actually wait in the classroom for the extra two minutes so that her friend Beth could pack her things and walk her to the parking lot. She'd go to lunch with Loki on one side and her friend Ted—also six feet tall—on the other. She even agreed to the three-way carpool her coworkers KJ and Vicki had been inviting her to join for the last month.

Although Loki had met and was on equitable terms with most of Darcy's friends, it was this that actually made him and them stand up and take notice of each other. They'd seen him as just a cardboard cutout of a "nice gentlemanly person," and he'd seen them as foreign, other, mortals outside his immediate notice. But now he was noticing them more, the way they banded together to stand by their friend—and they were noticing him more, and for once, the "niceness" they were seeing wasn't fake; he really did want to protect Darcy Lewis.

Darcy, for her part, was getting frustrated with the whole situation. She appreciated everyone's help, but was upset that it was necessary in the first place. A few drunk-dials where nothing got resolved led to and an in-person meeting that ended with her texting Beth to please take her lunch break and come to the café two doors down from her job to interrupt them as accidentally as possible. (Beth, being just as blunt and snappy as Darcy, had walked right up, plunked herself down at the table, stolen Jeff's drink and told him unceremoniously to buzz off. Loki privately thought the girl would have gotten along well with Sif.)

Professor Ahlström had noticed the stress and invited Darcy to use her office for escape purposes whenever she needed to. She'd also offered to get him suspended for stalking if the behavior continued—as it might adversely affect Darcy's academic success. Darcy had turned her down for the second one, but taken advantage of the first offer twice in two weeks.

If that didn't signify that things had gone too far, then Loki didn't know what did.


	11. Vengeance

There were very few people in the world—the cosmos, actually—that Loki would call "friend." Of this small, select list, Darcy Lewis was currently at the very top, in bold capital letters, highlighted in multiple colors and circled in red ink. She was fun, she was low-drama, she'd believed in him when no one else would, she kept the freezer full of ice cream and didn't get personally offended if his topics of conversation sometimes went over her head.

So, while she seemed to be handling her breakup fairly well—after Rowena Ahlström had eventually threatened to involve the school's administrators if Jeff didn't get off her case—he found himself unable (or perhaps unwilling) to so easily forgive the wretched, unworthy thing. It also did not escape his notice that Jeff Parsons—hereafter referred to as the Mop-Haired Maggot—had chosen to involve Loki himself, however indirectly, by blaming the demigod for his own inability to trust his now ex-girlfriend. Then there was the fact that he'd broken up with her specifically for manipulative purposes, and had then spent the next week haranguing her once he realized she wasn't going to come crawling back to him.

While Loki had no intention of winding up back in SHIELD custody over this, revenge was still very much in order.

Knowing that mortal culture was still somewhat foreign—and that he'd have to be very careful about safety, so that the Maggot wouldn't die inconveniently—he started with some research, looking up traditional revenge prank strategies. Once he realized that many of the good ones required access to the victim's home or car, he easily pick-pocketed the Maggot's keys in passing—he was asking for it! he literally went out of his way to bump into Loki; the young god didn't have to orchestrate a thing!—and then cut his afternoon class having cheap copies made at the hardware store. Then he replaced them when the Maggot left his bag unattended in the library to use the restroom, the copies in their little barcoded bags safe in his pocket.

The next order of business was to get a look inside his apartment, see which ideas were viable. Loki got off of work at 9pm that night, Jeff tended bar until 11, so including the 20 minute walk—he didn't want his car to be seen by anyone—he had about two hours until the Maggot got home. Cole, his former roommate, had moved out about a week before, and he was living alone until he could find somebody else to take the space.

Loki took a moment to walk through the set of rooms, frowning as he realized that the Maggot's desire to have Darcy move in would have been a downgrade for her; the place wasn't quite as nice as they one they currently shared. Yet another reason for a little karma delivery.

After a thorough inspection of the living space and the Maggot's possessions, Loki decided to devote his remaining hour to one particularly evil piece of work he'd read about online, and move every piece of furniture three inches to the left. He also changed the alarm clock from AM to PM, and changed the radio station it played from the local indie music station to one playing loud fire-and-brimstone religious sermons 24 hours a day. By 10:45pm, he had carefully erased all evidence of his intrusion, turned off the lights, and headed out into the night.

"Because I'm _Batman_ ," he could almost hear Darcy saying in the back of his mind.

On the way out, he noticed that there was a large, overgrown patch of landscaping on the right side of the door, which ran under the Maggot's front window—his apartment was on the ground floor. He smirked evilly.

-0-

The next night, Loki was off but Jeff—he knew from overhearing a conversation in the hallway—would be playing his guitar at an out of town venue, and from Darcy's description, it would be unusual if he got back in before dawn. That meant tonight was Loki's best bet for getting any real work done.

The first order of business involved convincing the sweet, elderly landlady that he worked for her block's landscaping company. Although he used an American accent and altered the illusion of his face slightly so as not to leave an impression, he was still able to charm her into not finding anything amiss when he spent an hour rooting around in the landscaping. He made sure to pull the weeds and prune some of the flowers before laying his trap, so it wouldn't seem like an obvious prank.

Then he carefully dotted the area with the contents of an entire flat of catnip plants, purchased cheaply from the local nursery's clearance rack. The Mop-Haired Maggot had a strong cat allergy, but since he had managed to kill even a cactus (according to a brief viewing of his Facebook wall) he would almost certainly not be able to recognize the catnip for what it was.

Then Loki headed home to wash up, change clothes and wait for the sun to set so he'd be obscured. The drain from changing his face hit him like a shift in gravity had somehow made him weigh ten times what he usually did, but he'd been expecting that, and laid down on the sofa for a power-nap, setting his phone to wake him after 20 minutes. He also took a look at his list and supplies, and crossed a few things off—there was no reason to harm the sweet landlady's lawn, or to damage any appliances that she'd be on the hook to replace. No matter—there was still plenty for him to do.

At dusk, he returned, dressed in dark, nondescript clothing, his face hidden beneath an unmarked baseball cap that Darcy had promised he would eventually want for 3am trips to the convenience store for emergency Vodka and other errands he'd rather perform faceless. Perhaps she expected him to be doing things like this, perhaps she did not, but either way, she was correct in her assertion that he'd want the thing.

The next stage began with a few things to take care of in the bathroom. Jeff styled his hair with copious amounts of thick, sticky purple hair paste, with a consistency similar to the bargain off-brand Nair copycat paste that Loki had picked up from Walgreens. He knew that the stuff didn't work very well, and many users had complained that it only took the hair off in patches, but he wasn't looking to give him a smooth, intentional-looking cue ball. He mixed the two pastes together thoroughly and then replaced about the same amount in the container. It looked and felt the same, but over time, it would begin to loosen the emo flop of hair that the Maggot seemed so proud of.

Next, he opened up the back of the toilet and dumped in half a bottle of clear, unscented dishwashing liquid. Then he unhooked the chain to the flusher handle. The Mop-Haired Maggot had often told Darcy in a loud voice that she needed a real manly-man around to fix things—a not-so-subtle jibe at Loki's somewhat refined English gentleman demeanor. He would think himself so clever to have "fixed" the problem, until he started flushing and the bowl filled with unexplained suds.

Next came the cologne that the Maggot used so liberally. Since the bottle was opaque and glass, it wasn't immediately evident how much liquid was in it—and it was almost impossible to tell once Loki had added a few tablespoons of dried, powdered catnip to the mix. He wasn't sure how diluted it would get or if the cologne would cover the scent, but he was willing to take a shot at it.

Finally, there was glitter.

Darcy had told him a while ago about a website where one could mail one's enemies glitter, and Loki had no trouble at all with taking tips from other evil geniuses. He'd purchased a large package of craft glitter, and now applied a thick helping to the insides of the bedsheets—as well as the clean sheets in the box under the bed. He sprinkled it evenly in every pair of underwear he could find, and in the toes of all the shoes. He used his height advantage and a small screwdriver to remove the cover from the bathroom fan and carefully added little piles to the top of the blades so that it would fluff out in a cloud of what Darcy called "craft-herpes" while Jeff was taking a shower.

More glitter adorned the top of the gasket on the refrigerator door, so that it would all fall inside as soon as the door was opened—after Loki unsealed ever soda and bottle of beer he could find, so that they'd all be flat by morning. The brushes of the vacuum cleaner received a generous coating, and he subtly turned the heat up, then glittered the top of the living room ceiling fan. For the magnum opus, he poked a hole in a laundry detergent pouch, drained its contents, filled it with more glitter, and stuck it right below the spigot where the washer filled up with water. The water would dissolve the pouch, showering all of the laundry in glorious, glorious glitter, but the tiny contraption wasn't visible unless one knew what to look for.

The last few pieces of mischief were electronic. Since Jeff's tablet was in "home mode," it didn't require a password as long as the GPS listed it as within his apartment. That was the trouble with convenience, Loki thought to himself with a smirk as he opened up Craigslist, which of course had saved the Maggot's username and password. Jeff had listed the spare room in his apartment, along with some pictures of the place, and Loki deftly altered the ad to advertise for casual hookups, saying that the word "roommate" was a "secret code-word," and swapping out the apartment pictures for images of a leather-clad "naughty agent" that he'd gotten from an online porn advert.

After erasing all traces of himself from the apartment, Loki slipped out the back door, locking it securely behind him.

Then he returned to his own apartment, and spent the hour until Darcy got off of work calling every local advertising religious organization, pretending to be Jeff, and crying about how he needed a higher power, and would somebody be willing to drop by in the next couple of days, just to sit with him, and tell him about angels? Some representatives from the "Mormons" and the "Jehovah's Witnesses" and a few others happily made appointments with him.

The best thing was, of course, that Darcy was at her very public workplace, where she was pretty hard to miss, in case Jeff accused her of doing any of it. Nobody would suspect Loki, of course—because everyone knew that Luke Randle was _entirely too nice_ to do something like that to someone. That and the fact that many of his pranks occurred in stages, so he wouldn't notice some of them for days, and they could continue to plague him with no maintenance from Loki himself.

-0-

"Jeff looks like he walked through a glitter tornado," Ted commented with a snort as he stood chatting with Darcy and Loki before they had to split up to go to their respective classes. Darcy turned to glance in her ex's direction and did a double-take. His hair and clothes were, in fact covered with vibrant, multicolored glitter, and he looked murderously angry. He was also walking with a slight limp. Had he run into a piece of shifted furniture once hard, or repeatedly until damage occurred, Loki wondered idly, keeping his face neutral.

"What happened?" Darcy called as he passed her. "Did a unicorn fart on you?" Loki inhaled subtly as he passed. Heavy cologne, heavy hair product, no smell of shower gel… he'd woken up late due to the reset alarm, so he hadn't taken a shower yet. Oh, how perfect.

"Someone broke into my house and filled my damn bed and dresser with it," Jeff snapped, halting abruptly. "Where were _you_ last night, huh?"

"At work," Darcy replied with a snort. "I wish it was me—I'd have put Nair in your shampoo." Jeff glared daggers at her, then stormed off to make it to class in time. Loki wondered in delight if he would be paranoid about his shampoo and just keep re-applying Nair-laced hair paste, speeding up the balding process. Oh, these layers were wonderful. He hadn't had this much fun since the time he'd replaced Thor's coming-of-age speech with a treatise on the history of the toilet.

Ted guffawed and then headed off to class, pulling out his phone to snap a picture. Knowing the guy, it would find its way to every social media known to man, with the hashtag # _unicornfarts_ or something similar.

Darcy glanced up at him with narrowed eyes, quirking an eyebrow at such a steep angle that he thought perhaps he could stab someone with it.

"Where were _you_ last night?" she asked pointedly.

"Why, Miss Lewis, are you accusing me of conducting mischief?" he asked innocently. Her eyes widened. "I seem to recall," he pressed, as he also headed for his classroom, " _someone_ told me to go ahead and be an asshole once in a while… wise words, I must say."


	12. Witch

September 23rd, Loki officially got transferred out of the café, and onto the sales floor. His pay was raised by $1.50 per hour, and after the initial excitement, he spent a few hours feeling thoroughly sick to his stomach at the thought that this was his life now—that something like that could make him so happy. He was a god and a prince—and now he was rejoicing over $1.50 more per hour and the prospect of spending his time in the same building on the other side of the café counter.

He began to confine himself to his room more than before, picking up his books or his tablet or turning on music on his phone, only to set them down, turn them off, and lay on his bed, tracing nonsensical patterns in the scattering of imperfections on the ceiling. He felt tired, but restless at the same time, and didn't know what to do with himself, so he spent a great deal of time doing nothing.

It became harder and harder for him to motivate himself to do anything. School seemed pointless—he knew eventually SHIELD would take him back in to work for them in a more full-time capacity, or else whatever he still couldn't remember would catch up to him, and he'd die, so what was the point of pursuing the education? He made himself go to work—pride prevented him from ruining things so shortly after getting the transfer—and showed up for his monthly meeting with Coulson, but his head felt fuzzy, and he had a difficult time focusing. What had been, for a while, a challenging puzzle—figure out how to protect the bumbling little humans from practically everything that moved—had somehow become an impossible task; a mental hurdle far too high for him to reach.

He hid it as best he could, but Coulson seemed concerned, and kept asking if he was feeling all right.

"I'm just tired," he sighed as convincingly as he could. "I didn't sleep much last night—just couldn't settle in." In fact, he wasn't sure he'd slept at all—he'd tossed and turned, then got up only to spend hours pacing back and forth aimlessly in the small room, then fell back into bed to try and fail to sleep again.

On Monday he had an exam, and just enough of his faculties left to him to decide not to quite fail _Empires in History_ , so he somehow fumbled his way to school on time. He wasn't entirely sure that anything he put down on the paper made any sense, and wasn't certain whether he gave a rip either way, but by the end of the period he'd handed in a few sheets of paper with writing on them and "Luke Randle" written legibly at the top, so that was… something.

Afterwards he didn't really want to go back to the apartment—he loved Darcy as much as he could love anyone right now, but he didn't know if he could handle hearing her talk. Although he didn't particularly care about anything, everything was somehow on his last nerve. He wasn't entirely sure how both could be true at the same time, but apparently they were. It felt like he had sand in his mind, slowing him down, making his thoughts heavy and thick and sluggish, and yet constantly itching in a place impossible to reach.

"Yeh look lost," a familiar Scottish-accented voice commented, and Loki realized belatedly that his distracted feet had carried him to one of the corridors that held offices, and Professor Rowena Ahlström was peering around the always-open door of hers.

"Just distracted, thank you," Loki responded automatically, turning to resume his aimless wander in another direction.

"Well, come in—hav'a cuppa tea," she invited, beckoning with a braceleted hand.

"No, thank you," he replied stiffly, really not wanting to make conversation, or sit still for a sustained length of time.

"So, yeh have somethin' better ta'do, then?" she checked, crooking one eyebrow. "Like ah said, laddie—yeh look lost. Tea's magic, yeh know…" Her torso vanished with a swing of green skirt and vibrant red hair braid, and he heard the loud "click" of her electric hot pot switching on.

Although Loki usually hated when anyone tried to make his decisions for him—touchy subject and all—somehow it was less of an irritant when it was Rowena. That, or perhaps he'd just lost a lot of his ability to be truly bothered about anything. Either way, he turned his footsteps to her office, and dropped his backpack on the floor before sinking down himself onto one of her several armchairs.

"They still callin' yeh heathen fer preferrin' tea?" she asked with a smirk. That was the first time they'd met, he remembered with something like fondness. He and Darcy had been in Starbucks, talking to some of her friends while they all waited for their drinks, and he'd made the apparently egregious mistake of admitting he wasn't much of a coffee person. He'd immediately glossed it over as all the mortals within earshot jumped down his throat over it, by commenting blandly that he hadn't realized it was such a big deal in America—all the while glaring daggers at Darcy. She'd dropped him right in it, the mischievous little minx…

That was what made Rowena notice him, though—the out of place "Brit" surrounded by brash Americans. She'd empathized with his experience of culture clash—though of course she didn't know how extreme it really was. Although she—like everyone else—couldn't know all the details, he'd told her the gist of his story. She was easy to talk to because—like Darcy—she not only didn't judge, she didn't pity. Despite the actual chronological difference in their ages, Loki saw her as a sort of mentoring figure—at least inasmuch as any human could possibly be in such a position to him. Perhaps it was only the character of Luke Randle who saw her that way; he couldn't say for sure. However, she could obviously see right through his attempts to hide his discomfort, and he supposed if he was going to tell anyone about his issues, she would probably be better than most.

"Rowena," he began—she allowed all of UC's students to use her first name, saying that part of college was that they were all experiencing the process of study together, rather than it being like high school where the teachers spoon-fed the students bits of knowledge to regurgitate come finals week. "When you were younger, what did you think you'd be doing with your life? Is this…" he gestured around her eclectically decorated office, "where you expected to be?"

He knew he was making what Darcy called a Hail Mary—a last-ditch and likely-to-fail cry for help. It felt _pathetic_ —he _was_ pathetic—but he really was that desperate.

"Oh," she huffed thoughtfully, "that was a long time ago. I'm older than ah look, laddie." The hot pot clicked again, the little red light at its base blinking out, signifying that the water had risen to appropriate brewing temperature. Rowena stood gracefully, her draping "hippie" clothing swirling around her as she retrieved a pair of mugs from the shelf of mismatched dishware behind her.

"In mah youth…" she mused, pouring the water and adding the little metal animals that she used to hold the leaves for steeping. "Ah expected te teach, yeah—though, no' quite in a settin' like this," she laughed, sliding a mug over to him. Loki helped himself to a spoonful of honey, as was his habit, and stirred the boiling liquid broodingly. When he looked up, Rowena was eyeing him critically, lips tight, eyes calculating—making a decision.

"Can yeh keep a secret, Luke?" she asked finally.

"I'm the Fort Knox of secrets," he assured her. It wasn't a lie—she didn't even know his real name. She hummed thoughtfully, then flicked her fingers, closing the door behind him… from five feet away.

"Yeh see, laddie," she explained as Loki blinked in shock, mind reeling, "ah don't focus on occult studies just because it draws in today's young'uns. Ah've go'history wi'the subject meself. Ah grew up in a magic-filled household, became a sorcerer like mah father. A pretty gud'un, if ah may say," she added with a laugh. Loki had finally caught up—remembering that earth did indeed produce the occasional wizard; they'd just called themselves and their arts by different names for centuries to avoid persecution. The Ahlström family must've been very traditional—or very old and powerful—he reasoned.

Which meant that Rowena's upbringing had to be vastly different from anything an ordinary human would understand. Perhaps they had more culture clash in common than he'd first realized.

"And ah can sense that you and ah are… similarly out'a place," she admitted. Of course, she'd only register him as a low-level magic user because low-level magic was all he could currently produce… "I dinnae know what's eatin' at yeh," she sighed, "but in answer teh yer question, yes, ah do know what et's like to go my whole life believin' ah'd end up a certain way, then suddenly findin' meself somwhere else entirely."

"And how did that feel?" he asked quietly.

"Oh, like dyin'," she laughed humorlessly. "Or perhaps like bein' born. It's hard teh say, when It's happenin'."

"And the way you saw yourself back then… was it good? Did you like that future? Did you want it?" Had she improved herself, escaping from a coven she did not want, or had she lost everything, like him, and settled for a mediocre life, explaining Shaman and Druid histories to bored young adults looking for a more interesting anthro credit?

"Ah think et was—a'the time, yeah," she responded slowly. "It was good… and ah was good at what ah did. Ah was a prodigy, in fact," she added, nodding at him proudly.

"What changed?" he whispered. His voice was dry, and he took a sip of still-too-hot tea.

"Ah had a baby," she laughed. That was _not_ what he expected to hear at all.

"I didn't know you had kids," he admitted. Her office was devoid of any family pictures—unlike her somewhat sentimental colleagues, who covered their desks in visual evidence of their big, healthy, happy families.

"Aye, two of'em, matter o'fact," she continued. "A wee girl ah called Aspen, and later a son." She paused, swallowing. "Didn't get teh name him," she murmured, then cleared her throat. "That wasn't all that happened, o'course," she added quickly. "The coven had it's own issues, ah made some life decisions, got married, split up… yeh know, ah still don't know if ah was right, teh do all of what ah did. But ah do know that at the time, it seemed like the best thing ah could'a done. Real life is messy, laddie," she mused, leaning back in her chair and staring at the tapestry-covered ceiling, "and decisions made under pressure can be just as messy."

"So you mucked everything up, and ended up here," Loki muttered, then realized a moment too late how horribly callous that sounded. But she snorted before he could apologize.

"Perhaps ah did," she shrugged. "But the thing is, people change. Desires change. The idea that somethin's going teh be a constant, that the future's set in stone, that life follows some predictable path from one thing teh the next… well, that's simply not how it all works. Sometimes yeh have teh lose what yeh thought yeh wanted—maybe even what yeh thought ye were—to become who yeh _are_. Part o'livin is learnin' and changin'. Once that stops… yeh may as well be dead. _That's_ why I wound up teachin'," she finished. "Because here, there's always somethin new teh discover—always a little more growin' teh do. Keeps meh young," she smirked, taking a long sip of her tea.

"Do you miss it?" he asked after a long silence while he digested that. "The future you thought you had?"

"All the time!" she exclaimed. "'Cause it was _good_ , yeh know? But it doesn't make where ah am now any less good. Ah'm a complex enough person to entertain more than one idea of a good life—tha's part o'growin' up too."

"Hm," Loki hummed, taking a long draught of his own tea and finishing it. When Darcy had said that college was meant to help people find themselves, he hadn't expected anything this overt. But… some of what Rowena had said seemed to almost make sense. Of course, that didn't make it any easier—grieving a life he'd never get to live. He set down his empty mug contemplatively.

"Did yeh find what yeh were lookin' for?" she asked as he slowly stood, retrieving his bag. He looked down at her and actually managed a brief smile.

"I think perhaps I have to decide what I'm looking for, before I can go about finding it," he responded cryptically.

"Well, knowin' that's half the battle, trust me," she responded, toasting him with her empty mug before setting it down beside his.

"Thank you," he said sincerely.

"Ye'r quite welcome," she replied with a warm smile. Then with a flick of her fingers, she unlatched the door and it swung open. "Mah door is always open, yeh know." Loki laughed—a brief exhale through his nose and a wider smile. Then he hitched his bag higher onto his shoulder and strode purposefully out, headed for the parking lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! This story includes a lot of OCs—Loki rubs shoulders with a ton of new people, it can't be helped. Now, in my Red Queen series, I used The Originals characters for OCs that have speaking parts—instead of spending a lot of time crafting my own OCs when people often don't like them much, you know how it is. In this one, some of my OCs are actual OCs, while some will be other fandoms' characters repurposed at my discretion.
> 
> This chapter contains my first example—Supernatural's Rowena! This version of her isn't the same as the one we see in SPN (and you don't have to watch SPN to get anything from this fic—fear not!) and that's how it'll be with other inter-fandom cameos. They'll have similar personality traits, some of them will have the same names, but that doesn't mean this story is going to turn into a Superwholock crossover or anything. MCU is still the MCU.
> 
> Those of you who've seen Doctor Strange are already familiar with the existence of magic within the MCU—that's the kind of "witch" Rowena is. I've created a hybrid of the original Rowena and a few of my favorite professors for a recurring character.


	13. Reflex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very, very mild reference to child abuse in this chapter.

"Jeez it is nice living with a tall person," Darcy sighed contentedly as Loki noticed her reaching up on tip-toe to get a clean dish into an upper cabinet and wordlessly came up behind her to help.

"Has it occurred to you to purchase a footstool?" he asked. "You've lived here for how long, now, and half your storage is out of your reach?"

"Hey, it's not half—it's like three cabinets," she pouted.

"And the tops of all the closets," he added. "And changing lightbulbs. And hanging posters."

"Okay, okay, I get it," she grumbled, sticking her tongue out. "I get a chair when I need to."

"Yes, I've seen you and your antics atop a rolling office chair," he responded, remembering the contortions she'd gone through attempting to get at something in the top of her closet. "Again—footstool, Darcy. Doesn't swivel, doesn't roll out from under you…"

"Meh, I like to live dangerously," she laughed. "Anyway, now you're here to do all the tall-people stuff. Here—this one goes over there," she added, handing him the newly cleaned waffle iron, which she stored nearly inaccessibly on top of the free-standing pantry. Loki took the appliance, coiled the cord around it, and set it in its usual space.

"Who else have you had living here?" he asked. He knew there'd been a male roommate for a while—thanks to overhearing the end of her relationship with Jeff—but he wasn't even sure how long she'd lived here.

"When I first moved in four years ago, I was subleasing for a friend," she responded. "I moved here after I got expelled. I love my brothers, but I kinda' didn't want to stay in Chicago. Wanted to build up a good reputation and get some savings together before trying the school thing again. So, anyway, my friend Lori took an out-of-state internship for six months, and I needed a place to stay on short notice, so I moved into her room—your room, now. Keenan had what's now my room.

Then Lori took a job for the company she interned with, and didn't come back, so I signed a real lease after the sublet term was up. Keenan lived here until he graduated a year later. Then I was alone for the summer, which was expensive, and kinda' freaked me out to be honest, so I moved all my stuff into what's now my room—I wanted to be able to see if anyone was at the door without actually going to the door and making noise to let someone know I was here, y'know?" Loki nodded thoughtfully.

"Then for a year after that, I had this girl Jazmyn living here—and her boyfriend practically lived with her, in that tiny room, and ate all my food," she grumbled. "But he never officially moved in or took out the trash or did dishes or anything, so that was annoying. And _man_ did he snore! And they weren't quiet, either, lemmie tell ya."

"Well, Thor practically _thunders_ in his sleep," Loki chuckled, "so I understand where you're coming from on at least one of those issues."

"Yeah," Darcy giggled, "Jane's been complaining about how she needs earplugs at night. Anyway, once she finally moved out, Beth—you know her, with the tattoos…"

"I know who Beth is," he snorted in mock offense. "I think everyone in the state knows who she is—she's hard to miss." Darcy snapped a towel at him.

"Whatever—she subleased from me, while _I_ took an out of state internship, and then she found a studio when I came back, and then you moved in."

"So, definitely nobody who can reach high shelves," he summed up.

"Nope," she responded, popping the "p" sound definitively.

"And you still don't own a footstool?"

"Nope."

Loki sighed, rolling his eyes as he slung his thoroughly sodden towel over the top of a cabinet door.

It had been a weird week. After his conversation with Rowena, he'd resolved to take some time to just do what felt right—let his reflexes do his thinking for him without worrying about the outcome. It seemed the most reliable way of determining what he wanted, considering (as he'd come to realize recently) that he'd spent his whole life with the idea of what a successful future looked like chosen for him, by Odin, by Asgardian culture… He had assumed that he had a destiny, and so had hardly considered who he was, and what he wanted from life.

It had all come exploding out of him during those fateful confrontations with Laufey, Odin and Thor—did he want to be a king? A destroyer? Thor's equal? Thor's brother? Odin's favorite? Odin's successor? He didn't know.

So, there he was, banished and powerless, having lost everything, trying to start new and figure out what he wanted, who he was, and what he ought to do next. It was a little terrifying, because simply letting go and acting openly on his every impulse wasn't something he'd often dared to do. But here on earth, that was actually quite normal. Oddly enough, his life here was like a safety net.

"How many brothers do you have?" he asked suddenly, turning to Darcy, who was filling up their water bottles from the pitcher in the fridge. He'd always avoided bringing up family—sore subject as it was for him—but he was feeling brave.

"By blood, none," she responded immediately, capping the bottles and sticking them in the refrigerator door before handing him the filter pitcher to be refilled. "The people I refer to as my family are a group of students from UIC—we actually applied for fraternity status once, but we didn't get approved." She snickered and nodded her head slightly from side to side, as if to say that thinking back on it, she could see the administrators' point.

"They're mostly guys, so I say 'brothers.' We weren't born together, but we're family all the same."

Loki was reminded powerfully of their first meeting—their very first conversation. She'd said that clearly they had very different definitions of family. That made a little more sense, now that he realized the way she herself defined it.

"My parents were kinda' sucky at the whole 'parenting' thing," she sighed. "I spent a lot of time with the guys—from teenage on. We were kinda' like a fraternity—most of us were UIC students at one time or another, people moved in and out when they needed to, but we're always family, wherever we go. And that house will always be 'home.'" She paused for a minute, smiling fondly.

"I moved in when I was sixteen," she added, taking the full pitcher from Loki and sticking it back in the fridge.

"But humans don't fully mature until they're… is it eighteen or twenty-one? I can never remember," Loki asked. Both ages seemed startlingly young, from his perspective.

"More like twenty-five or thirty," she laughed. "You're a legal adult when you're eighteen, you can buy booze when you're twenty-one, you have that right. But our developmental period is actually longer than that. But yeah, I was still a minor when I moved out, if that's what you're getting at."

"And your 'sucky parents' didn't look for you?"

"My mom left my dad when I was little—she lost custody because of her history in rehab. _Failing_ rehab, I mean. Anyway, my dad had his own… issues. When I was sixteen, he got arrested."

"I'm so sorry," Loki murmured sympathetically.

"I'm not," she said flatly. Something about her face—the sudden aggression in her eyes and the set of her jaw—made him think the subject was closed. But then, in a low voice, she continued.

"'Battered persons' is the technical term for a situation where someone is being physically abused in the home, and has a reasonable fear for their life," she explained. "The idea is that people still have the right to defend themselves—violently if necessary. The first time I realized how important good lawyers were was when there was nothing but a public defender between it being me or _him_ who ended up in jail."

Loki was silent, stunned. Of all the people he'd met, goofy, generally contented Darcy Lewis was the last person he'd expected to have had an abusive childhood. He wasn't sure how long he was quiet, but suddenly she was smirking up at him, the pain from her face gone except for a ghost of it in her eyes.

"You're not the only one in this house with daddy issues, Mischief Managed," she murmured, then slipped out past him into the living room.

"We're going out tonight—I promised Beth and Ted," she called over her shoulder. "Don't get too engrossed in your book—I _will_ drag you away this time." Loki smirked, remembering twice now that she'd apparently tried to get him to go drinking with her and some friends and he he'd realized belatedly that after trying and failing to distract him from Dostoyevsky, she'd simply left without him.

"No promises," he called back, thinking of the large bag he'd brought home from work last night, which was still sitting on his desk because he'd have to reorganize his shelves just to have room for all the new stuff.

-0-

" _And you're sure he hasn't noticed anything?_ "

"Positive," Sitwell muttered casually into his phone as he sat in a reasonably crowded restaurant in the middle of the day, invisible among the other suit-and-tie-clad men and women getting their lunches before continuing their work on Capitol Hill.

" _This is the god of lies and trickery we're talking about. I don't like him so close to us, now that he's already had a run-in with rogue agents_."

"I don't think anyone does," Sitwell agreed, taking a sip of his coffee. "But if Romanov and Fury and Carter herself didn't notice, I doubt an outsider would."

" _Just to be safe, I want to reassign our people—keep it casual, make it look routine, but get everyone out of Larimer by the end of the month. He already has reason to mistrust SHIELD—let's not give him anything to look too closely at_."

"Everyone… everyone?" Sitwell checked, mentally running through a roster of people he was going to have to move.

" _Well, everyone except…_ "

"Right," Sitwell responded, metaphorically checking one name off the list. "Consider it done."

" _I knew I could count on you, Jaz_."

"Just doing my civic duty," Sitwell murmured.

" _Hail HYDRA_."

"For the greater good," Sitwell responded in kind, using the more modern, less noticeable vernacular for his public setting. With a click, the other line disconnected, and Jasper Sitwell set down his phone and rubbed his hand tiredly over his head. HYDRA would never have allowed such an unforgivable breach in discipline as agents Jackson, Kowalski and Bales had committed a few months ago, and thanks to SHIELD's lax internal security as of late, Fury was running to catch up. That meant more thorough background checks, more random inspections, more chances that HYDRA would be exposed before its time.

Personally, Sitwell blamed agent Barton. His little habit of bringing home strays had seemed like a cute, heroic sort of thing to do at first, but he'd opened the door on including freaks like Bruce Banner or renegades like Skye-why-wasn't-her-last-name-ever-recorded-on-her-training-paperwork. Hell, it opened the door on resourcing Loki. And now that the policy mess had finally created a hazard, the cleanup was threatening to turn up significantly more than anyone outside of HYDRA expected. He waved the waiter over and asked for the check as he stuffed the last of his sandwich into his mouth.

No matter who he was supposed to be affiliated with, Norse gods meant a ton of unwelcome overtime.

-0-

"The cheesy effects, though…"

"It's not about the effects," Beth ranted, gesticulating wildly with her half-full Solo cup. "They were fine for their era—they got the point across! It's the story!"

" _Story_!?" A man Loki did not know groaned incredulously, adjusting his glasses as they slid down his sweat-slicked nose. "Sentient puffballs, brain-thievery, saving the day by reciting the declaration of independence?! And don't forget the time they put a party hat on a dog and called it an alien."

"Oh… bullshit minutiae!" Beth looked ready to toss the rest of her drink on the offending geek. Loki was leaning against the buffet counter in Ted's kitchen, having recently escaped—er, _gracefully bowed out of_ —a heated debate among what felt like half of Ted's party guests about the most superior pizza joint in Colorado. Now, sensing a certain level of drunken fumbling from the argument to his left, he slid a foot or so to the side, to be out of the way of the inevitable splashing.

"'Do, or do not; there is no try,'" her interlocutor quoted. "I mean, doesn't get much deeper than that!"

"'You may find that _having_ is not so pleasing a thing as _wanting_ ,'" Beth shot back immediately.

"'So this is how liberty dies—to thunderous applause,'" he replied with relish, flinging his arms wide. A splash of beer missed Loki by a few inches, and he began to really regret letting Darcy drag him to this thing.

"'Everybody's human,'" another unfamiliar voice said, and a roughish brunette man in a long gray coat with a fantastic dimple on his chin and the beginnings of laugh-lines around his eyes joined the conversation with almost a swoop. "' _Everybody_ ,'" he added quietly, with a twinkle in his eye, imitating the original actor's face and tone impressively.

"Oh, shut up—heathen," the bespectacled man spat, while Beth applauded gently against her cup, then remembered she still had alcohol left and proceeded to drink it, then shuffle off for a refill. The intruder shrugged good-naturedly, grabbing a slice of pizza off the take-out-loaded table and biting into it.

"Guess not everybody appreciates the classics," he commented with his mouth full to no one in particular.

"I think it's more that not everybody agrees on what exactly constitutes a classic," Loki allowed with a chuckle.

"Eh," the new man shrugged, leaning against the counter next to Loki. "They're both good, really."

"Personally, I prefer to avoid stories about family drama," Loki murmured. "But I can get behind a good old-fashioned adventure, 'vintage' effects notwithstanding," he added, looking at his companion. The man grinned, nodding his understanding. Then he held out a hand.

"I'm Jack," he introduced himself cordially.

"Luke," Loki responded. Jack laughed as they shook hands.

"And that's not ironic or anything," he observed lightly. Loki snickered a little as well. He had secretly wondered if Darcy hadn't actually gotten the name from the movies—daddy issues leading to intergalactic violence and all of that. One of the many reasons he'd had trouble getting into the series.

"So," Jack said, finally letting go of his hand—a shame really; his rough skin had been warm and surprisingly comfortable. "You don't seem like this is your kind of crowd." He gestured around the house with his pointer finger, then took another bite of his pizza.

"Well, I'm relatively new around here," Loki responded. "I didn't get out much back home, so the party scene is a… bit of an adventure, you could say." He smiled widely. "My friend ah, invited me. Nearly at knifepoint." He winked to show that he was joking, although he could tell by Jack's expression that he'd gathered as much.

"How very considerate of her," he said with a smirk. "I got reeled in by the grapevine—my coworker's brother's friend's sister; something like that."

"How admirably inclusive," Loki murmured, purposely dropping his voice into what Darcy had called "sonic pheromones." He watched Jack swallow. Then the slightly shorter man looked thoughtfully at him, pursing his lips.

"Well, since we've both done our social duty by now," he started, glancing at the clock. They'd been at the party for over an hour—that was plenty. "How about you let me buy you a better drink somewhere?"

"I thought you'd never ask," Loki responded, voice as smooth as hundred-year-old whiskey—and just as intoxicating, he knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mention is occasionally made (as you've noticed in previous chapters, I'm sure) of the Agents of Shield characters. Basically some of the events of the show are still going on in the background, but the team lives on the base in Larimer, CO, and just flies the Bus some of the time. Obviously it's also AU in that Phil is aware of how he was brought back, etc, but they met Skye and all that. If you don't watch AoS, fear not, they're just agents and doctors and stuff like you'd expect from SHIELD. Except for Skye, who is an accomplished and mysterious hacker—Phil's turn to bring in a stray.


	14. Spooky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick canon note: although I vastly enjoyed Iron Man 3, none of that movie's events exist in this universe; it would be way too hard to explain why in the heck nobody else from the Avengers got involved in Tony's seriously life-threatening issues with Killian, since in this AU they stay a closer knit bunch after the battle of New York. 
> 
> Also, this story being Loki/Darcy-centric, I don't want to devote time, energy or page space to explaining away what Marvel has yet to satisfactorily explain; Tony blowing up all his suits, getting his arc reactor removed, then suddenly having suits again in time for AoU/Civil War. Like, if he could have had the shrapnel removed and all that and just attach the arc reactor directly to the suit, why didn't he do it right away in Iron Man, or when he was having the crap poisoned out of him in Iron Man 2, and save himself a lot of risking his life? (shakes head.) 
> 
> So, yeah, no Iron Man 3 in this universe. Tony and Pepper continue collaborating on projects the way they did in the beginning of The Avengers—no (major) arguments about tinkering. If anything, she's been working on ways to use his tech to make awesome prosthetics, like what he designs for Rhodey at the end of Civil War. Cause she'd totally be down for that.

"Spill!" Darcy exclaimed as Loki closed the front door behind him. He looked up in surprise to see her sitting cross-legged on the sofa, Netflix paused, looking at him in gleeful expectation.

"Spill… what?" he asked, half faux-innocently, and half blearily. He was exhausted. It had been worth it—so worth it—but he was pretty sure he was going to sleep for a week. "Why aren't you still in bed with a hangover?" he asked as he dropped his keys in the bowl by the door and flopped down in what they'd both started calling "his" armchair.

"Because it's _seven pm_ , dude," she chuckled, nodding at the clock. "I got over that hours ago. And don't change the subject—were you with Mr. Hottie McHotness this _whole time_?"

"Up until half an hour ago, yeah," he responded with a smirk. "'Hottie McHotness?' He'd probably love to hear that, actually," he snorted after mulling it over.

"Wow," Darcy whispered, still grinning ear to ear, eyes sparkling. "This whole time?"

"Well, we ate brunch, and had some snacks," he shrugged. "And we talked too. Well, a bit," he amended. "He's a member of a traveling theatre company," he added. "They're performing Shakespeare's Henry V next weekend. He gave me a couple of tickets—you should come." He waved four slips of paper with theatre information printed on them.

"Yeah, awesome, back to the good stuff," Darcy pressed.

"I'm not giving you a play-by-play," Loki snapped indignantly.

"Now you're suddenly shy?" Darcy exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air in exaggerated shock and confusion. "Are you going to see him again?" she added. "Other than on stage."

"This Thursday," he admitted with a proud smirk. "Told him I'd take him to that comedy club on Fifth Avenue."

"Guessing I shouldn't wait up for you?" Darcy checked, eyebrow raised, eyes gleaming.

"Ah, no," he responded. "Definitely not."

"Lucky!" she groaned.

"Me or him?" Loki asked innocently. Darcy—having learned better than to give him her pillows by throwing them—smacked him on the arm with one.

"Maybe I wanted to go to the comedy club," she shot back. "I like to laugh." Loki snorted.

"So, no new fellow for you yet?" he checked, remembering her flirting with at least one guy at the party. She shook her head.

"Nah, I got really wasted and tried to break the back of Ted's closet, shouting about Narnia. Then I spent the rest of the night alternately making really bad puns and trying to convert people to the religion of the almighty pizza. Not very sexy. Fun as hell, though," she added with a reminiscent smile.

"Well, maybe you'll meet a nice gentleman at church—Dominoes church, I mean."

"Oh, no, Lou Malnati's was crowned the ultimate victor last night. You left before we decided."

"Ah, so that's the Vatican of all pizza," he laughed. His roommate nodded proudly. Then her stomach growled.

"Shall we go to mass, then?" Loki asked, pulling out his phone to order said pizza.

"Be downright sacrilegious not to," Darcy agreed, pressing her palms together sanctimoniously.

"Amen and hallelujah," Loki chuckled as he hit the call button.

-0-

The first time Loki saw a small child wearing a Captain America mask and shirt, carrying around a little plastic shield, he thought nothing of it. The Captain was not only a famous hero, but a staple of modern folklore. Children everywhere adored him. Sometimes he'd appear in the background of news broadcasts, and when people recognized him, the adults flocked to him, forming an awkward perimeter on the edge of his celebrity aura, but the children ran right up to him, flinging their arms around his middle in excitement.

So the tiny "Captain," trotting along, gripping his mother's hand, had little effect on the demigod. Loki's train arrived, he boarded, and thought little of it.

But when he arrived at the station near the SHIELD HQ, he noticed another little Captain, and a little Iron Man. It was a bit unusual, wasn't it, he thought as he entered the lobby and gave the passcode, that two different children would be dressed up as the Captain on the same day, and that one would have an Iron Man sidekick? It was odd that parents would let their children idolize the man of iron—he wasn't exactly role model material.

Well, until he saved the world, Loki reflected. He'd largely avoided thinking about the battle of New York and his involvement; when he did, it was a headache-inducing blur, culminating in being suddenly beaten to a pulp by Banner's huge, angry monster. Granted, the pain had brought him back to himself, for which he was grateful in a twisted sort of way, but his wounds from that confrontation had hurt for days. He blinked, trying to dispel the image of the Hulk's snarling face, and the floor of Stark's tower flying up to bash against his whole body with all the force of Thor's hammer…

"Good morning, Loki," Coulson greeted him, cool and professional as always. The taller man sat gracefully down in his habitual chair, and leaned back, getting comfortable for what was always a long day—and would hopefully distract him from his painful memories. "Before we begin, I have a serious matter we need to address." Loki raised an eyebrow.

"Oh?" he asked, more interested than concerned. Phil tapped a few keys on his computer, then turned the screen to show Loki a scrolling group of images. Loki involuntarily snorted, and Phil glanced sharply at him.

"Am I to take that as an admission that you put a curse on Jeffrey Parsons?" the agent demanded disapprovingly. Loki shook his head, trying to get ahold of himself.

"No curse," he laughed. "How could I? I haven't any magic." He cleared his throat at that sobering statement, then continued. "No, this was just some wonderfully petty revenge," he explained, watching what was now a video of Jeff rocking back and forth, tearing his Nair-soaked hair out, spittle flying from his mouth and snot dripping from his nose, both running down his allergen-puffed face. A priest of some sort walked around him, shaking a cross and reciting what was probably an exorcism.

"You call this petty?" Coulson asked, his eyebrows pulling up his forehead in consternation. Loki nodded, clearing his throat again.

"Got everything I needed from local businesses—craft supplies, a few hygiene products, and a lot of catnip," he admitted freely. "He's through the worst of it by now," he added with a shrug. "As long as he replaces some of his hygiene supplies and digs up the catnip in his yard. Oh, and gets used to how I shifted the furniture."

"And _why_ , exactly, are you tormenting this human with craft and hygiene supplies?" Phil asked slowly.

"Because he didn't stop at breaking Darcy's heart," Loki explained with just a hint of menace. "He spent weeks making her life miserable, tried to destroy her, and then blamed the whole thing on me. I would've let him be if he's just stuck to ending their relationship, but he didn't, and I wasn't going to let him get away with how he treated her."

"Huh," Phil commented, looking back at the screen. Jeff sneezed as the priest tossed holy water on him. "Good man," he added with something like approval in his face.

"How dare you?" Loki muttered with a smirk and an evil gleam in his eyes.

"On behalf of SHIELD," Phil added with a sigh, closing the window on his computer.

"You have to strongly dissuade me from committing such acts in the future," Loki finished for him. "I'll remind you that the only illegal thing I did was the breaking and entering, and that any property damage can't be more than a hundred dollars or so. I did hardly anything, and if he goes to court, I can get half the school to testify that he was stalking miss Lewis, plus one professor was ready to file a complaint because his activities were interfering with her academic success."

"Guess this is what happens when we put the god of mischief and Darcy Lewis together in an apartment," Phil snorted, pulling up the latest research data he wanted Loki to look over.

"Well, I wasn't about to get domestic with anyone else," Loki muttered. "And you'd all be swimming in horny Syrinians by this time of year if I hadn't warned you off of them, plus possibly started a war with the Xandarians. Your planet owes Darcy Lewis a great debt."

"So, if living with her hadn't been an option, you wouldn't have taken the deal?" Phil asked curiously.

"If she hadn't shown up and convinced Fury and the others to give me a semblance of freedom, there wouldn't have _been_ a deal, remember? Even if Fury had offered me a job and stalled extradition to Asgard, I would have turned him down flat; if I was going to sit in a cell, I'd rather one where I'm hailed as a prince and a god. Not to mention the food is probably worlds better."

"I can't argue with that," Phil nodded. "But it didn't occur to you to try to escape? Take over the world again?" Loki scoffed.

"What use have I for your world?" he demanded, spreading his arms wide to punctuate his point. "Just restructuring it so I could rule would be more trouble than the whole planet's worth."

"Then why attack us in the first place?" Phil demanded, affronted. "Why kill me?"

"Part of a larger plan, naturally" Loki responded vaguely. 'I wish I _knew_ why,' he added privately. 'Or perhaps I don't.'

" _Pitiful little godling," the Other crooned, his spittle damp on Loki's cheek as the young god hung limply in his bindings, mind spinning as he tried futilely to think his way out of this. "You don't need to know why we want it—you don't need to know anything. You simply… need… obey."_

_Then the blinding pain took all of his focus, and he couldn't wonder about anything but his tortured nerves, and how many more milliseconds he could survive this agony…_

" _Simply… obey."_

" _No," Loki whimpered pitifully. "Please… get out… get out of my mind… no!"_

"Loki!" Phil was exclaiming. Loki blinked the vision from his eyes, gasping for air. The smaller human had rounded the desk, and was leaning over him, a hand on his shoulder. "What just happened?" Coulson asked, looking shaken.

"I…" Loki began, not knowing where to start.

"Is everything all right in here, sir?" an agent Loki didn't recognized demanded as he and two others burst through the door.

"Stand down," Coulson ordered immediately. "Call Simmons up here." Loki waved him off, catching his breath at last.

"No," he insisted. "I'm fine. Ignore that."

"You were so white I thought you were going to keel over and die right here," Coulson responded. "Shaking so hard you looked like somebody out you on vibrate, staring off into space. Then you started hyperventilating, and didn't come out of it until I touched you. I'd like Simmons to examine you."

"And what, exactly, does she know about Frost Giant physiology?" Loki shot back, straightening up in his chair.

"Plenty," Simmons herself responded, entering a moment later and hearing that last comment. "Your mum left me with some books on the subject. They were quite informative."

Loki wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that, and so sighed moodily and slumped lower in his chair. Whatever had just happened seemed to have drained him. He glanced fearfully at his hand, making sure he wasn't turning blue; he wasn't, thank the Norns. He hadn't had a gruesome flashback like this since… since he'd been kidnaped and tortured by those rogue agents, he realized.

Well, it was no surprise, realizing that he'd been tortured. He'd seen the footage of his arrival; the state he'd been in before his magic had rejuvenated enough to cover the marks. He'd actually been a bit grateful that he didn't have much memory of that time. Did the flashbacks mean that eventually he was going to have to remember _all_ of that time, he wondered in rising horror?

-0-

"But you're all right now?" Darcy checked, shouting over road noise as she drove, using speakerphone on her way to work.

"Yes, I'm perfectly fine," Loki assured her with a sigh, sprawling across two seats in the half-empty train car. "I don't know why Phil called you," he muttered, remembering when he'd gotten kidnapped and Coulson's first act had been to contact Thor. Was that man going to call him a babysitter every time anything remotely unusual happened? That was going to get irritating fast. Simmons thought he had PTSD, but at his insistence, they'd let the matter alone, other than calling Darcy and telling her bloody everything.

"She lives with you," Coulson had explained flatly. "She has a right to know, for your safety and hers." At least he hadn't told Thor. Yet. As far as Loki knew. He tried to imagine his not-brother's reaction to the news… He'd come flying in, Mjolnir whirling, thunder crashing, shaking Loki in a panic, probably dislocating something in the process, the stupid barbarian.

" _Look at this!" Thor roared, shaking him and forcing his head to turn so he could survey the destruction of New York. "Look around you! You think this madness will end with your rule?"_

_The jarring battle of the past few minutes had started to clear his head, and Loki knew he was right—more than even Thor knew. This was madness and chaos and nothing could come of it._

" _It's too late," he rasped. "There's no way to stop it."_

" _No!" Thor, assured him, pressing a hand to the side of his neck, trying to turn his rough hold into a fraternal embrace. "We can, together." But Loki had caught his breath by then, and the control on his mind had strengthened. He smiled sadly as his hand pulled out a knife, jamming it into Thor's side, the limb moving without his permission. At least he'd kept his shoulder still, preventing the wound from going anywhere higher or more important. Then the moment of clarity was gone._

" _Sentiment," he whispered, but was it him whispering it, or someone else forming the word with his lips? He didn't know. It hurt to think about. He didn't want to know. He turned and left his brother bleeding on the ledge._

"Loki!" Darcy was shouting through the phone. It lay neglected on the floor of the train. A tiny hand was laid across his arm, and Loki turned his bleary eyes to see a human girl of perhaps five or six, looking up at him in concern.

"Are you okay, mister?" she asked. He blinked.

"Yes," he whispered back, voice strangely rough. "Yes, I'm quite all right. Thank you."

"Lucy!" the girl's mother exclaimed, noticing her proximity to the big stranger. "Don't bother the man! I'm so sorry, sir," she added, standing up to collect her daughter.

"Don't worry about it," Loki assured them both, collecting his phone. A surreptitious glance around the train showed that the little girl was the only one who'd noticed his lapse.

"I'm here, Darcy," he added into the phone. "I got distracted and dropped my phone."

"Uh-huh," she responded, unimpressed. "And what exactly 'distracted' you so badly?"

"Tiny Black Widow and Hawkeye," he responded, realizing what the little girl and what appeared to be her older brother were dressed as. "Darcy, is there some reason that children are wearing Avengers costumes today? This is the third time I've seen them doing it."

"Well, Halloween's coming up in a few weeks," Darcy sighed, clearly not wanting to change the subject. "It's Saturday; there must be kids' costume parties."

"I see," Loki responded with a silent swallow. He remembered her explaining about Halloween. He just hadn't expected to be reminded of the Avengers so many times. If he was going to keep having flashbacks every time something reminded him of New York…

This was going to be a bad few weeks, he realized darkly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've borrowed another outside-fandom character as an OC: Jack is Captain Jack Harkness, from Doctor Who and Torchwood. Of course, he's totally AU here, not a time agent, not immortal, all of that stuff. Just Jack being… Jack. (Hehe)


	15. Changes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tw: Chapter contains some brief and vague mentions of child abuse

" _Why do you continue to resist?" the gravely snarl seemed to vibrate his whole brain, shaking him to the root of his soul. His vision blurred, his stomach rebelled, and for a long moment he felt like he was floating away from his body._

' _No!' He wasn't sure if he screamed it aloud or just inside his mind, but the whisperer heard, and his retribution was swift, agonizing, and dragged on for what felt like months. When he was finally released from it, he sagged in his bonds, panting raggedly. How long had he been here? He couldn't remember. Time was strange when one was falling through space; and stranger still when one was in constant, excruciating pain._

" _You have nothing left," the voice taunted, ripping into him painfully. "Your 'family' were using you, they never loved you... you killed your real father... probably your real mother too, when you unleashed the Bifrost… your only real talent is turning instruments of peace into instruments of war…" it mused. Then fresh torment washed over him again, pulling him under..._

Loki sat bolt upright, hair plastered to his face with sweat, desperately gulping down lungfuls of air as he shoved the covers off of him. On his left, Jack stirred, squirming around and trying to get comfortable, but not quite awake. Loki tried desperately to slow his frantic breaths, not wanting to wake him, but realized after a few seconds that he wasn't going to be able to get quiet any time soon. Just as the thought entered his head to slip out of bed and take a cold shower until he calmed down, Jack rolled over to face him, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Luke?" he muttered. "Everything all right?"

"Just a nightmare," Loki whispered, trying for a romantic, nonchalant running of his fingers through Jack's fuzzy hair. His hand was shaking violently; he hadn't realized it until he touched Jack's immobile skin. The shorter man levered himself upright, gently wrapping Loki's hand in his warmer one.

"Must'a been pretty intense," he murmured. Loki swallowed, still trying to get ahold of himself.

"Yes," he whispered back roughly. "Yes, it was." To his horror, his voice cracked, and the pain in his throat and burning in his eyes suggested his humiliation was about to get worse. Jack leaned forward, wrapping him in his arms, and smoothing his hair.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked quietly. Loki shook his head, not trusting his voice. He was falling apart at the seams. He knew what was causing it, of course; as Halloween had drawn closer—culminating in the night itself, a few days ago—he'd seen more and more people in masks. The humans had devised every variation on the gruesome with which they could possible decorate themselves, and he was sure that some of them had actually based their designs on their attackers. The more he saw the twisted faces, the more he thought about his time… away.

His heart was stuttering in his chest, hurting his ribs. Jack's palm pressed against it through his back. Loki wished he could find that comforting, but actually, the embrace reminded him of the fact that this human could probably snap his neck with little effort from this position.

"No," he whispered. If he started to talk about it, if he thought too hard about it, there was no telling what horrors that might unleash on his exhausted brain.

'You have nothing left…' an echo of a whisper flitted sickeningly through his mind.

'You're wrong,' he told it defiantly, as he and Jack laid back down. He rested his head against his lover's chest, listening to his heart beat. 'I've got Jack, right here, I've got Darcy across the hall, I've got Phil in the SHIELD base, and I've got Thor whether I want him or not, the oaf.

Come up with something more original; I grow bored with your lack of imagination.'

As he drifted back into a fitful sleep, his last thought was to wonder if that quip was something he'd thought up now, or said _then_ …

-0-

The morning dawned gray and soggy. As Jack left, he pulled his coat collar up to block the fitful wind and sprays of rain, and dashed for the bus stop after giving Loki a quick last kiss. Loki, for his part, was unbothered by the cold, but found the rain and clouds as mood-dampening as they were environment-dampening, and shivered a bit as he locked the door and headed to the bathroom to grab a shower before work.

Work had been a bit of a nightmare itself, following Halloween. Suddenly people started to be in a hurry, demanding, snippy and generally out of sorts. Darcy had warned him about "The Holidays," and he'd been prepared for the rush, but not the darkening moods. And honestly, there was no point in being rude to _him_ when _they_ were the ones who wanted to purchase something the store had not yet received. What did they think would happen if they shouted at him? That he'd magically make the computer system alter the store's sales policy? That he'd summon the items they wanted from the future, and drop them into their sweaty human hands? Summon a golem out of paper and ink to open another register? It was already beginning to pull at his fraying nerves, and the official beginning of "hell season" was still weeks away.

"I don't get paid enough to pretend to give a shit for the twentieth time today," one of his coworkers, Nikki, muttered as she lounged in the breakroom, gobbling up her sandwich in record time so she'd get the rest of her break for a cigarette. Loki could understand where she was coming from.

"Save your strength," he laughed humorlessly. "Three weeks until Black Friday." Nikki leaned backwards and groaned.

"Is it like this in England?" she asked, sitting back upright and taking another bite.

"Well, we've got Christmas," he responded without missing a beat, "but no Thanksgiving, so no Black Friday. Still a bit much, though."

In reality, Asgard's winter solstice festival was far less stressful—although the summer one had driven him completely up the wall quite a few times. At least down here he didn't have to worry about all the political implications (Read: Odin lecturing him endlessly about the political implications) of pulling a few (relatively) harmless pranks to amuse himself during the festivities. He'd known that getting a customer service job would involve a whole lot of people wiping their shoes on him and him smiling about it; this was just going to be the part where he had to square his shoulders, put on his best god-of-lies face, and stock up on enemies to prank for the petty pleasure of it.

School was beginning to pile on the work; after midterms, everyone got serious about the projects they were supposed to have been working on all semester. For his part, Loki had actually gotten a decent start on most of them, so all he had to do now was a bit of tweaking. He ought to have had more time, but once his classmates realized that he was not only brilliant but an over-achiever, they began approaching him after classes, in the hallways and even online, asking for help with their various projects. Still trying to get a handle on the exact persona of Luke Randle, Loki couldn't accurately gauge just what to say yes or no to, so he often erred on the side of saying yes. That gave him an impressive workload of material that wasn't his own, which wasn't unmanageable, but was a bit tedious to slog through.

"Want one?" Darcy offered as she set down an armload of groceries on the table and immediately pulled a bottle out of a six-pack of beer. Loki shook his head, pulling his tablet out of the way of the bags.

"Not really a fan of beer," he responded. "Thanks anyway."

"I noticed," Darcy snorted, still proffering the bottle. "This is cider beer. Totally different animal. Give it a chance—I'll happily finish it if you don't like it." Loki accepted the bottle and knocked the cap off against the edge of the table while Darcy stuffed the groceries into the refrigerator. It _did_ taste better; it actually had a flavor to it, instead of being carbonated, alcoholic tainted piss-water. He took a second gulp, which Darcy took as her cue to open her own, because he'd bonded with his.

"You up to twenty yet?" she asked, sitting down opposite him and opening up her laptop.

"Twenty-two and counting," he responded, turning his tablet around and opening his email so she could see the new threads.

"Look at you, Mr. Popularity," she laughed. "Next semester, charge for your help. But get 'em hooked first."

"I'll certainly take that under advisement," Loki chuckled as he finished the edits he was making and sent the paper back to its frazzled and grammatically challenged author.

"You got time for twenty-three?" she asked, sliding down so she was hidden behind her computer screen, then leaning to the side to peer around it.

"Calculus?" he checked. She nodded.

"I'm avoiding it because I'm not ready for the obligatory cry-fest," she groaned. Loki shook his head, rubbing at his eyes, and scooted his chair around the table so they were sitting next to each other.

"Luckily your problems are usually easy," he commented as Darcy smiled gratefully and retrieved her textbook from her backpack.

"Hey, everything's easy for _you_ ," she grumbled without any real malice. He shook his head.

"On the contrary," he responded as his email pinged, "everything's easy when the person I'm meant to be helping understands what I tell them _the first time_." No doubt that was Nathan again, confused about basically everything. Loki was on the verge of giving up on the fool, telling him to google it or ask the professor.

"Is Jack coming over again tonight?" she asked as she found the right page in her book and angled it so Loki could see better. "I found this mixed drink thing on Pinterest, but it makes way more than either of us should drink before Monday classes." Loki shook his head.

"His company is moving on today, actually," he admitted a little sadly. "He won't be back in town for another year, unless something changes."

"Seriously?" Darcy responded sympathetically. "That sucks… Does he get time off—could he come visit before then?"

"Some, but usually not this far south," Loki shook his head. "I knew it couldn't last. Was lovely while it did, though," he admitted softly. He fell silent for a long moment, and Darcy squeezed his shoulder.

"Suppose I'll have to mark my calendar for when he'll turn up again," he announced with an air of trying to shake off his sadness. "One of the good things about never leaving the state, I suppose; I'll definitely be here when he gets back."

"Oh, you're leaving the state," Darcy snorted. "I get the feeling I'm gonna have to fight it out with Fury, but you're leaving the state. Christmas," she reminded him. He frowned, tilting his head to the side. "Oh, shit," Darcy snorted, "did I legit not tell you? I made plans for us to go visit my family in Chicago for Christmas and New Year's."

"You did not tell me," Loki assured her, taking another drink and shaking his head. "How are you planning on getting that past Fury, not to mention both our jobs?"

"Same way I got you _here_ ," she snorted, "by being awesome and not giving up until I get the answer I want." Loki rolled his eyes and shook his head again.

"Why am I not surprised?" he muttered, not doubting that Darcy Lewis could almost certainly do exactly that. "When's this trip supposed to be happening?" Darcy pulled out her phone, opening her calendar application.

"We fly out a week after finals end," she responded, then froze, staring at the November screen.

"So… in _December_ ," Loki checked after she'd sat still as a marble carving for a few long seconds.

"Yeah," she exclaimed sharply, flipping over to December and showing him the highlighted week and a half. "Yeah, we fly out the 19th, at what-the-hell-o'clock in the morning," she added with a grimace. But her eyes looked too bright, and even the average people-reader could guess that something was very wrong. Loki, of course, was leagues beyond average, and of course Darcy knew that, so as he shifter a little to face her, she turned her face slightly away, uncomfortable.

"What's wrong?" he asked softly. She swallowed, then sighed, shaking her head a little.

"I'd almost forgotten," she murmured, flipping back to November and tapping on the twentieth. A single event was scheduled for that day—labeled "doomsday." There was no other information.

"My dad," she explained, clearing her throat. "He gets out of jail that day."

"Are you safe?" Loki asked immediately, trying to recall what little he knew of the American justice system. Darcy laughed humorlessly.

"In theory," she responded darkly. "He's not permitted to contact me, or be within fifty feet… I think he can't leave the state, actually."

"Which state?" Loki asked apprehensively.

"Illinois," she nodded. "But when we're there we'll be with my brothers—he's not stupid enough to try anything around a bunch of people who'd all skin him if they got the chance." She sounded like she was trying to convince herself just as much as him.

"And you're sure that it's a good idea to have a visit right now?" he checked. Darcy's face hardened.

"I haven't let that man decide where I can or can't go since I put two bullets in him," she snapped. "I'm not about to start now." Loki raised his hands placatingly.

"Just checking," he responded with a shrug. He wondered if this was reminding her of the Jeff scenario, where all of her friends had unofficially started playing bodyguard, or if it was so far beyond that in seriousness that the comparison hadn't even crossed her mind. Darcy blew out a long breath and rubbed her eyes beneath her glasses. Loki decided not to ask her about the two bullets until a better time. He'd known the situation got physical and she'd had to defend herself—he hadn't known she'd actually shot him. Twice, apparently.

In any case, to _him_ , this was no different than the situation with Jeff. Clearly it was more serious, but the principle was the same; Darcy Lewis was one of the few people he called friend, and if these bumbling mortals thought it was a good idea to cross a god by harming her, they would learn their mistake the hard way.

And this time, he was ready. During the night—the ones he didn't spend with his favorite thespian, anyway—he'd been practicing a little, experimenting with what he could do with the tiny remnant of magic he still possessed. Holed up in his room, with Darcy fast asleep across the hall, he'd drop the illusion and see how far he could push himself. He was getting stronger—by the tiniest increments, and it exhausted him, but progress was progress. Technically, he told himself, he wasn't breaking the terms of his asylum here—it was _Asgard's_ job to remove his magic, not his. No one had said anything about him messing around and getting it back, and honestly, what they didn't know wasn't going to hurt them. It wasn't like he was going to try anything drastic.

Unless Doug Lewis crossed him, of course.

"All right then," he carried on after Darcy had straightened her glasses. "Calculus, eh?" she groaned, then nodded.

"Calculus," she repeated sourly, finishing her beer and reaching into the fridge for another one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah, the situation with Darcy's dad! The reason I made her family so messed up was because Loki blames his daddy issues for a lot of his problems, so I wanted to juxtapose that with a really, really broken family, not because one person's experiences outweigh another's, but just to give him some perspective, and to let him see someone—a person he already likes and respects—who built their life back up, y'know? There may be some mild trigger warnings in the next few chapters as I delve into that subject matter, just forewarning you.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't actually know the intricacies of the American legal system; I'm a fanfic author, not a law student. Normally when I don't understand something, I'll research it, but from what I DO know about the intricacies of the American legal system, it's hella complicated, a bit subjective and varies from state to state, sometimes judge to judge and case to case. So after a cursory viewing of some research materials, I have decided to simply *make shit up* on this topic. (Based on what seems logical, anyhow. I'm still going for a basic sense of realism.)


	16. Paranoia

"Group projects prepare students for successful afterlife careers as the guardians of hell," Darcy snapped, shoving her textbook across the messy table, and sending a stack of papers fluttering across the tiny kitchen. Loki looked up calmly, not really taking his attention off the bacon he was frying.

"Who's holding you up?" he asked as he gently shook the pan from side to side, then turned slightly to catch the little digital timer seconds before it went off. With a few deft motions, he opened the waffle iron on the counter, levered the waffle out of it and onto the cooling rack, and poured more batter in, closing the top and resetting the timer.

"Freaking Kayla!" Darcy groused, then peered around Loki to the waffles taking up most of the counter space, and the batter bowl which was still half-full. "How many of those are you making?" she asked.

"Two dozen," he responded. "We're only going to get busier, and I get bored of cereal in the mornings pretty quickly. I figured we could freeze them, then heat them up in the toaster."

"Brilliant!" Darcy responded approvingly. "Are they all spoken for, then?" she asked. In answer, Loki grabbed a clean plate out of the dish drainer, stuck a waffle on top of it, and slid it across the paper-covered table towards her.

"Thank you," she sang out, reaching into the cabinet behind her for the syrup.

"Bacon'll be ready in a few minutes, and I'm going to scramble a few eggs, want some?" he checked. He knew he never needed to ask if she wanted the bacon. She nodded, mouth already full of waffle.

"Kayla's been looking a bit harried lately," Loki commented as he dished up the bacon and started cracking eggs directly into the pan—a practice from which Darcy had originally tried to dissuade him, prompting him to continue it just to show off his flawless technique. "She's probably having trouble prioritizing. Ask her for something tiny—a picture of a page in the textbook or the date of the next presentation."

"Tiny won't really do it for one fourth of a group project," Darcy commented slowly, but without sarcasm or irritation; if _Loki_ was suggesting it, there was more going on. The demigod grinned as he scrambled the eggs.

"Doing a tiny favor for you will endear you to her," he explained. "Her subconscious will tell her that she wouldn't have done it if she didn't like you, so therefore, she must like you. Then when it comes time for her to choose between homework items, she'll remember that you're on the hook as well for that one, and prioritize it. Manipulation 101*," he finished, gesturing triumphantly with the spatula.

"I'm writing that down… that is super helpful," Darcy muttered, scribbling it in the closest notebook.

"Well, glad my skills are coming in handy for _something_ down here," Loki chuckled humorlessly, sliding the cooked bacon onto a paper-towel-covered plate and beginning to crack eggs directly into the greasy pan—a habit he'd picked up largely to annoy Darcy who had insisted that he'd drop shell bits into the food. To date, he hadn't lost a single white fleck, and she'd stopped glaring in disapproval whenever he did it.

"That, and getting you off for Christmas," Darcy reminded him. He nodded in her direction, allowing that. It had been a bit of a challenge, but he'd got there in the end—the trick was showing up on Thanksgiving/early-Black-Friday overnight when he hadn't been scheduled to work, and clocking in when it turned out (to no one's surprise) that three people had called out and two others were still drunk from their families' parties. As the crowds slowed and the sun peaked over the horizon, the harried manager had been in such a state that Loki could probably have asked for a $10 pay raise and gotten it.

"Oh, I have that thing tonight," Darcy added, remembering suddenly. "I better get gas before school."

"And remember that your brown coat has a hole in the pocket," Loki added, maneuvering the eggs onto two plates and adding bacon to each. Three separate occasions she'd managed to lose her keys in the lining of that coat.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, "fear not, Jane had solved my problem." She leaned over and reached into her backpack, retrieving the ring which held two keys—car and apartment—three miniature membership cards, and…

"Is that… meant to be Thor?" Loki demanded, squinting at the round, fluffy keychain which was, indeed, a "tsum-tsum" style caricature of the blond oaf.

"Yep!" she responded with a grin. "Jane bought the whole Avenger set, but this one made Thor kinda' uncomfortable—something about it not looking manly enough, I'm guessing—so she sent him to me."

"And he's much too large to fit through the hole," Loki finished for her, a smirk widening across his face as he imagined Thor's probable reaction to his squishable doppelganger. He pinched the soft material experimentally between his fingers.

"Exactly," Darcy nodded, tossing her keys back into her bag once he'd released them. He noticed the grip of her trusty Taser poking out of the main compartment, and his jaw tensed. The date was November 27th, and Doug Lewis had been out of prison for seven days. She'd acted normal, for the most part, but he'd noticed that she hadn't left the house once without her Taser since then.

Most of her friends here didn't know anything about the situation, except for Beth, who he'd noticed had also begun to carry a large canister of Mace gel and had gone back to walking Darcy to her car.

"Do you want me to come with you?" he offered quietly, eyes still fixed on the Taser until she zipped the compartment, hiding it from sight. She shook her head.

"Thanks, but the tickets are crazy expensive when the school isn't buying a batch of seats. And I'll be in a big group. And he's not allowed to leave Illinois," she added—something she'd reiterated to herself about seventy times in the past week, and never quite seemed to believe. Although she hadn't talked much about it, Loki could draw on his own negative experiences to imagine what it must be like to go through one's whole childhood believing that one person was somehow all powerful and all present, just waiting to pop out at you and punish you for existing. On the one hand, his own not-father actually _had_ been extremely powerful and capable of appearing at a moment's notice, but on the other, he was beginning to realize the stark difference between what he feared from Odin, and what she'd had cause to fear from Doug Lewis.

In Asgard, a child in her situation would have been immediately placed with relatives or an adoptive couple, and the offending parents—both the abusive father and neglectful mother—would have been punished according to the ancient laws. From what he understood about Earth, however, the groups meant to ensure such protective measures here were woefully understaffed, underfunded, and generally ineffective. It amazed him that so often, when mentioning her history, she did so with a sense of gratitude for the people in her life who'd come to her aid, rather than with an air of justifiable bitterness about those who'd failed her so deeply.

Even though she'd declined his offer of an escort, Loki found himself considering throughout the day whether or not it might be wise to go spend the evening at William Allensfield Public Library—the massive library near the theatre where she'd be that night. He could browse their large collection of Stephen King (his newest literary obsession) and if he decided to go home with an armload, it wouldn't cost him anything. And of course, if anything untoward happened to Darcy, he'd only be four blocks away. But each time the thought started to sound sensible to him, he'd shake himself a little, and tell himself that Darcy's paranoia was getting to him.

Realistically, the chances that the despicable human would be anywhere in the state were slim to none, and if he did turn up, Loki was quite certain that Darcy would have no problem shooting first and asking questions later. He dismissed the notion each time it came up, and after his classes, he returned to the apartment to finish reading _The Dead Zone_. However, he didn't take his shoes off, and couldn't make himself focus, in spite of the gripping tale on the pages that lay in his lap.

Leaning his head back against the sofa, he rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands until he saw stars. It wasn't even five o'clock yet—her play wouldn't even _start_ for another hour. This was going to be a very long night.

It was going to be a very long night at the library, he decided, snapping his book shut, gathering his tablet and sliding them both into a bag. If this had been Asgard, and someone he cared about had been afraid, he'd have had no qualms at all about tailing them, unseen. While many would have called such behavior dishonorable, he felt it was simply prudent. Although here and now he couldn't summon a golem, see long distances with magic or turn invisible (well, not for long periods of time, anyway) he could get on the train ( _bugger_ rush hour traffic and downtown parking) and ensure that he was close at hand. If nothing else, it would make _him_ feel better, and then maybe he'd get to enjoy _The Dead Zone_ to its fullest extent.

-0-

"So there's seriously nothing going on with you two?" Anna asked for what Darcy was pretty sure was the fifth time that evening as the curtain finally, _finally_ fell and the lights went back up. That had to have been the longest play Darcy had ever suffered through, and the actors hadn't even been cute.

"No, Anna," she droned for the fifth time, "Luke and I are friends. Just friends. He's not really my type." Well species, technically, but Anna didn't need to know that bit. Once Loki and Nina had broken up, Darcy had found herself on the receiving end of this question along with the "do you think I'm his type" question from quite a few acquaintances. Since Jack wasn't a student, his rumored existence hadn't been enough to drive away interested parties.

Although Darcy was hardly surprised by the attention her single-and-ready-to-mingle roommate was receiving, it had started to peeve her a bit. First because people kept spreading rumors that they were a couple—which successfully drove off _her_ potential suitors, _damn gender roles straight to hell where they belonged_ —and second because she felt like they didn't have a right to say that they liked him when they didn't even really know him. They didn't know about his sarcasm, his wicked cleverness, the way he always contrasted earth with hundreds of other realms and cultures, the way he liked to argue with the television. All they knew was what precious little he showed them—they hadn't even met the good stuff yet.

"Think you got enough to write the paper?" a guy whose name she couldn't remember asked, saving her from having to continue the repetitive conversation by holding up his meagre half-sheet of notes.

"Enough not to fail, I guess," she laughed dryly, holding up her own notebook, which wasn't much better off.

"Wanna get some food and see if we can crowdsource this shit?" a girl in front of them asked, and several people agreed enthusiastically. Darcy was sorely tempted, both by the potential grade improvement and the chance to stay together with a large group for as long as possible, but she knew that the later the hour and the more tired she grew, the more paranoid she'd become.

"Nah, I gotta get home," she responded. "It's my turn to cook tonight."

"He cooks too?" Anna exclaimed as Darcy retrieved her backpack from beneath her seat and carefully slid her notebook and pen into it without either revealing or burying her trusty Taser.

"Yes, Anna," she sighed as she slung her bag across her shoulder and stood to leave. "He cooks. He even mass-produced freezer waffles for finals week," she added over her shoulder with a touch of pride. Moans of envy from all concerned—both over the hot roommate and the stash of homemade waffles—were the last thing Darcy heard from her classmates as the crowd noise enveloped her and she entered the lobby.

After the packed theatre and rising heat from sitting near the back—and consequently the top—the outside was starkly freezing, and she pulled her scarf up immediately to cover her nose and mouth.

'And I'm going to be up at Lake-Freaking-Michigan in December, _voluntarily_ ,' she thought ruefully as she tried to control her shivering. She'd found a parking spot two blocks west of the theatre itself, but between the cold and the dark and the slight drizzle and the paranoia she'd been fighting all week, it seemed like an eight mile hike. She strongly considered hopping onto the train—which had a stop right by the theatre exit—but she didn't want to get a ticket for leaving her car in a metered spot overnight without paying for it.

Squaring her shoulders and drawing herself up to her full height, she set her jaw and walked purposefully, a technique Beth had tried to teach her for increasing her presence and parting a crowd of people taller than herself. She wasn't entirely sure if it was working, but two intersections came and went and she arrived at her car unmolested.

It was when she went around the front to get into the driver's seat that she noticed something amiss in the flash of passing headlights.

-0-

Ignoring the dirty looks he got when his phone went off in the library with supreme disdain, Loki swiped the green icon and held it to his ear, standing as he did so and sliding his book into his bag.

"Hello," he greeted Darcy levelly, telling himself that she was probably home and simply calling to see if he'd be back for dinner.

"Loki?" she breathed, sounding choked with panic. Instantly his every sense was on high alert and his legs took him towards the nearest exit with long, purposeful strides.

"Someone slashed all four of my tires," she gulped.

"Where are you?" he demanded quickly, breaking into a jog as soon as he reached open air.

"I'm in a McDonald's by the theatre," she responded. "I should've turned back and gotten right on the train, but I freaked out, I thought maybe…" she trailed off, but she didn't really need to finish that sentence. It was obvious what she thought.

"Are there security cameras?" he asked immediately.

"Yeah," she replied. "I'm in full view of one of them, but out of sight from the windows. The closest train station is three blocks away, and I'm too freaked out to leave. Could you come pick me up?"

"I'm four blocks away," he said, keeping up the jogging pace as he tried to remember where the closest McDonald's was to the theatre. "Took a trip to the library. I'll be there in ten minutes. Do you have your Taser?"

"Yeah, in my hand, under the table. Hurry," she whispered. He didn't think he'd ever heard her sound more frightened, and without another word, he disconnected the call so that he could run flat out.

-0-

Darcy's phone battery was dangerously low, and she didn't want to obstruct her senses by putting in headphones, but she found herself alternately humming and mouthing the words to snatches of song. Music had always been her refuge when she was afraid, and to be deprived of it in this situation just added to her rising hysteria.

Of course, anyone could have slashed her tires.

But the timing was just too horrible.

There was only one other group of guests in the fast-food restaurant at that time of night—a mom with her two young children, on the opposite side of the dining room. Two different people came in, ordered takeout, and left, and each time the door opened, Darcy ducked her head, trying to hide her face with heir hair and wishing she'd worn a hat with a brim instead of her beanie.

'You're in public,' she kept repeating to herself. 'There are cameras. He'd be screwing himself by leaving the state, let alone coming after you. This is a coincidence. Loki will be here in nine minutes. Eight. Seven. Six. Seven again.' Time trickled by so slowly it almost seemed to flow backwards, and she shook herself a little. Definitely five minutes. The door opened again and she inhaled a slow, steadying breath through her nose.

The man who'd entered wore a bulky coat with the collar turned up, a baseball cap, and sunglasses.

At night.

And his hand was in his pocket—a pocket which contained something long enough that it poked a rounded barrel out the stomach of his jacket.

Darcy's heart stopped.

The man had a gun.


	17. Hero

'I rub shoulders with gods.'

Darcy sat perfectly still, head tilted downwards, eyes trained on the armed man's shoes so she could watch where he was without him feeling eyes on him. It was possible he hadn't seen her yet; she wasn't visible from the outside.

Unless of course he'd followed her here, then just waited a while to make her sweat it out.

'I rub shoulders with gods,' she told herself, shifting slowly in her seat so that she was poised, ready to stand up and make a break for it. 'I convinced an entire secret government agency to let me take an intergalactic terrorist home with me. That intergalactic terrorist made me breakfast this morning, and is on his way here right now to send this guy straight to the pits of whatever version of hell the Vikings believed in. I rub shoulders with gods.

I have nothing to be afraid of.'

Gripping her Taser, she raised her eyes, willing herself to look at him. The man sniffed, wiping his nose with one shaking hand, and Darcy frowned, noticing a few unexpected things.

The man's fingernails were as short and blunt as she'd expect, but his pinky nail was noticeably long—a coke nail, something that in all his years drowning himself in alcohol, her father had never once shown an interest in. The next thing was that he was short; at first she thought it was just because she'd expanded him in her mind, but after staring at him for a moment, she realized that he was indeed a bit shorter than she remembered.

But oddly enough, it was none of those things that made it click in her mind—no, it was the Colorado Rockies bottle-opener keychain hanging from his jeans pocket, and the fact that her dad was an avid Chicago Cubs fan.

She made herself look at the face—really look, in spite of the hat and the sunglasses and the coat collar. She hadn't seen him since she was sixteen years old, but she hadn't forgotten what he looked like, and this man's chin and cheekbones were completely wrong.

 _It wasn't him_.

A flood of relief evaporated in moments by an inferno of rage. Rage that a complete stranger had had the audacity to make her think that her father had somehow hunted her down; this ordinary scumbag had reduced her to a trembling teenager, waiting helplessly for rescue to arrive. She exhaled slowly, heat flaring through every part of her, as her third adrenaline rush in twenty minutes slowed the scene before her and he slid the gun out of his pocket to hold it low at his side.

'I rub shoulders with _gods_ ,' she thought, looking down on him from the inside of her mind as she glided fluidly to her feet and crept towards him, her Taser an old friend in her hand.

'And the last time a _god_ scared me half this bad, I Tased his ass too.'

-0-

Two police cars passed Loki with their sirens on as he ran flat out towards Darcy's place of refuge. To his horror, they pulled into the parking lot beneath the signature Golden Arches, and the officers immediately spilled out, leaving their lights flashing, to enter the restaurant. Panic jolted down his spine, and he gripped the switchblade he'd carried in his pocket ever since his disastrous kidnapping at the hands of rogue SHIELD agents. He missed his daggers, but he couldn't really carry anything larger in the garments typical of American mortals.

Keeping the knife concealed for the moment—there was no point in alarming the police and having to hack his way through them prematurely—Loki slowed and rounded the building so he could get a look through the brightly-lit windows while the outside darkness kept him hidden. Two officers were escorting—well, half carrying, half dragging—a heavily bundled, handcuffed, and totally unconscious man from the building. A third was placing a run-of-the-mill handgun into an evidence bag, and a fourth was listening to something the shaken but apparently unharmed cashier was saying.

There was no sign of Darcy anywhere, and the arrested criminal could not have been genetically related to her. For a moment he thought that perhaps he'd found the _wrong_ McDonald's—they were bloody everywhere, after all—but then he heard an unusual sound. Someone nearby was humming faintly; the opening to _Light Em Up_ , if he wasn't mistaken. And below that, there was a faint buzzing, which would start and stop at random.

The sound of someone clicking a Taser on and off like a nervous person might click a pen.

He found her two buildings down, in the entryway to an alley—far enough in that it was hard to see her from the street except for the tiny blue spark of electricity she was gripping like a lifeline, but not far enough in that if someone were hiding behind the trash bins at the end of it, they could get to her without her seeing and electrocuting them.

"Darcy," he said softly, more to announce his presence than because he doubted it was her. She was crouching down, and her head whipped up at his voice, her eyes wide, skin covered in a sheen of sweat. Before he could say anything else, she'd scrambled up and flung herself at him. His arms wrapped around her instinctively. After the panicked dash to get to her, he needed to feel that she was here and whole.

"It wasn't him," she murmured after a long moment. "There was a man with a gun, but it wasn't him—just some dumb thief. I freaked out and fried his ass," she added with a little more strength, holding up her Taser for emphasis. "But…" she turned her face to look back in the direction of the restaurant.

"I panicked after. I didn't want to draw attention to myself and I was scared that what I did might count as assault, even though I probably saved lives, so I just ran out the door, but my backpack's still in there, with my dart cartridge and my ID and my keys…" she trailed off.

"And you don't want to explain to the police why you left in such a hurry, he finished for her. She nodded mutely, and he could see her teeth clenching.

"I can retrieve your things without being seen—that's no challenge," he assured her. "Will you be all right out here by yourself for another two minutes?" she looked up at him questioningly.

"And what if they think it's weird that some guy is coming into a crime scene and picking up an abandoned bag?" she demanded shakily.

"I said," he replied evenly, placing his hands on her shoulders and quirking an eyebrow, " _they won't see me_. Do you trust me, Darcy?"

"Y-yeah," she responded, nonplussed. "Of course I do. But how—?" she cut off as Loki vanished from view. A soft chuckle from a few steps away and the removal of the warmth of another living body were the only thing to alert her to the fact that he'd already started to head back towards the restaurant.

True to his word, Loki emerged from the gloom two minutes later, Darcy's backpack slung casually over his shoulder. In that time, she'd had the chance to compose herself, realize that someone whose magic had been taken away half a year ago shouldn't be able to turn invisible at will, and then remember all the reasons that she'd trusted him so far, and apply them to the present situation. Leaving the bag where it rested against one side of his back, he wrapped an arm around Darcy and started to walk back towards the train station.

"I altered the security video so your face doesn't show," he mentioned casually. "Unless you tell anyone or the cashier you saved happens to recognize you on the street, tonight should remain safely between ourselves. Though I doubt you would be charged with anything, if I'm understanding the relevant laws correctly." Darcy nodded.

"You're probably right," she whispered, trudging along as the weight of that deeply exhausting evening began to hit her. They carried on in silence until they reached the train station, and then without her prompting him to do so, Loki led her into a private sort of alcove at the end of the empty car, sitting between her and the rest of the carriage so that, of the two of them, the only thing really in view was the shoulder of his coat, and even that only from a particular angle.

"When'd you get it back?" she whispered after a few minutes. He'd left his arm around her, and she was leaning against him, so she could feel the very slight rise of tension in his muscles. It was subtle, but Darcy was still on edge, poised to notice absolutely everything. "Your magic," she clarified, although it was obvious he understood. "I thought your mom did something to drain it?"

"She did," he explained after contemplating his answer for a moment. "But she had to leave a remnant to let me maintain my human appearance. During my unfortunate experience at the hands of the vengeful former SHIELD agents, I discovered that by deactivating that spell, I could harness and use trace amounts of my former power. This is nothing compared to what I can really do," he added bitterly. "But yeah, I can be invisible for a few minutes and tamper with a few frames of security recording." He felt rather than saw her nod as he glared aimlessly at a random point on the car wall in front of them. But a moment later, she drew away from him, sitting up straighter and turning her head to look at him.

"Wait, you don't just mean your hair, right? What human appearance? I thought Asgardians looked human to begin with?"

"Well, first of all, it's the other way round," he corrected her dryly, wishing he hadn't brought it up and had instead made up a clever lie about his magic. He was too much in the habit of defaulting to the truth with her. "Humans look Asgardian. And second, I believe I mentioned that my real parents are beings known as Frost Giants?"

"Um, yeah," Darcy remembered, wracking her brain for details. This was good. It was better to focus on some fascinating new alien nuance to her roommate than to think too hard about what had and hadn't happened that night. "You didn't mention that they… you… look different though."

"Well, we do," he responded quietly. "What you're seeing now is an illusion—a caricature, I suppose. This is what I would look like if I were Asgardian. Or human," he allowed. "All I did tonight was alter the appearance to reflect the background behind me. It's like a disillusionment charm, instead of an invisibility cloak," he added, suddenly realizing the Harry Potter parallel.

"Huh," Darcy nodded thoughtfully. "Can I see?"

"You already saw," he responded, although the pit beginning to form in his stomach was warning him that she hadn't meant his handy little chameleon trick.

"No, I mean _you_ ," she corrected, elbowing him in the ribs. "Can I see what you really look like?"

"Why?" he demanded, realizing that he was sounding petulant when he meant to sound offended.

"Because, I've never seen a real alien before! I mean—" she added quickly as he opened his mouth to remind her for the umpteenth time that he and Thor were 'real' aliens, thank you very much, "y'know, alien-looking aliens."

"You saw the Chitauri on all those recordings," he grumbled.

"Real alien-looking aliens who don't want to kill me, then," she sighed. "How come you don't want to show me?" she countered.

"We're on a public train and I'm meant to be a human named Luke Randle," he shot back, rolling his eyes.

"Okay, when we get home, then," she shrugged. He opted for a noncommittal jerk of his eyebrow and folding his arms across his chest, figuring he could do a better job of dissuading her in the moment than he could getting her to drop it so far in advance. Deciding she'd won, apparently, she settled back in beside him, leaning her head against his shoulder as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He could tell that she was still tightly wound, but she was doing what she always did in scenarios like that; distracting herself by anything and everything she possibly could. They rode in silence for a while longer, got off the train at the stop near their apartment, and made their way down the darkened street towards the square of light from the lamp that Darcy always forgot to turn off.

Once they arrived indoors and shed their coats, Loki immediately set about calling the insurance company to arrange for the car to be towed and have the tires replaced. Luckily, the foolish criminal had slashed all four, so the insurance policy would cover the damage. Darcy sat down on the living room sofa, but didn't put on a movie or grab a book or even take off her shoes. Once he'd disconnected the call, Loki sat down beside her, trying to gauge if her silence was the pensive, frightened, brooding kind or the plotting-how-best-to-make-Loki-show-me-his-true-form kind.

Then he heard her swallow.

"Hey," she started, and her voice was uncharacteristically rough and quiet. "I'm… gonna ask you a personal question, okay? You don't have to answer—I'm not gonna push you, or whatever."

"I think _that_ is quite literally a first," he quipped, looking down at her warily. "What do you want to know?"

"Do you…?" she swallowed. "Do you regret," she finally whispered, "killing your birth father?"


	18. Secrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for attempted violence against minor and description of gunshot wounds

Loki's eyebrows shot up. Of all the things he'd expected to come out of her mouth—do you breathe under water, do you eat polar bears, how many genitals does your species have— _that_ was certainly not what he'd anticipated hearing.

"Thinking of offing yours?" he checked quietly, wondering how much she could get away with considering what SHIELD owed her versus how many buttons she tended to push. There was no denying that the quick and quiet murder of Doug Lewis would certainly be a long-term solution to the problem she was facing now—Loki had even been considering how he might go about it without getting caught, or at least set things up so that the criminal would be caught breaking the terms of his parole and tossed back in jail. He hadn't really expected that Darcy would come to the same conclusion herself, however. For all her bluster and love for her Taser, she wasn't a particularly violent soul.

"No," she responded, shaking her head. "I feel like that would be giving him even more power over me, 'cause I'd become a murderer just over him. But…" she added, so quietly he had difficulty hearing her, "I was _going_ to, then.

"I planned it," she admitted. "I didn't see another way out, I didn't think anyone could help me. I was so scared, _so scared_. What you're seeing now is just a watered-down version," she assured him darkly. "I watched him so I'd know the code to his safe; memorized it so no one could catch me writing it down. I got his gun out while he was asleep in front of the TV—well, I thought he was asleep." A shudder ran through her, and the air seemed to cool by a few degrees. "I was wearing gloves, so the gun wouldn't have my fingerprints on it—only his. I was gonna shoot him in the side of the head, then stick the gun in his hand so people would think it was a suicide. Just like TV," she whispered with a shrug and a dead-eyed smile.

"He came upstairs when he heard the lock open—it was this old, clanky safe, definitely not built for getting into it quietly. He started shouting, telling me to drop it, waving this big rock paperweight around, threatening to kill me if I didn't put the gun down…" She was squeezing the fingers of her right hand between the fingers of her left, staring off into space as she described the scene.

"The first shot missed, and I had about half a second to realize that now he was definitely going to kill me. The next shot hit him about here," she pressed two fingers to a spot just below her clavicle, "and the third went through his lung, over here." When she gestured to the site, Loki noticed that her hands were shaking.

"He fell backwards, and just kept coughing. It was that nasty, wet pneumonia sound, but it wasn't mucus in his lungs, it was blood.

"I just stood there, watching him drown on the carpet," she murmured. "But then it was like I woke up—actually, it was more like somebody shocked me with a cattle prod. And then I was fumbling with the phone and calling an ambulance.

"I've always wondered what would've been different, y'know? If I'd been strong enough or bad enough or however you see it, to let him die." Taking a deep breath, she cleared her throat, rubbing casually at her eyes, then looked him in the eye for the first time since starting her story.

"I know all of your dirty secrets," she said with a shrug. "And now you know all of mine.

"Well," she amended, seeming to return to herself, "that and I used to sleep with V, and now I call him one of my brothers. I guess not _actual_ incest, but still weird." She shrugged and smirked. "You'll meet him next month. He's the hot Russian one." Loki snickered a little, but then sobered.

"I don't regret killing Laufey," he admitted dispassionately. "I regret some of the other things I did in those days," he added vaguely, "not the least of which was not sitting down and thinking everything through so I could make better decisions, and a cleverer plan. But Laufey was a monster long before he was the father who abandoned me to the mercies of his enemies. The fact that an accident of birth meant we shared blood really just disgusts me even more.

"When I was growing up, we'd always hear stories about how the Jotuns were these uncivilized monsters. They were the bogey-men of Asgardian children; the perpetual, stereotypical 'enemy.' Now that I think about it, I don't know what it was we were supposed to hate, exactly, but when you're a little one and they aren't giving you details on historical battles just yet, what you hear is that they've got eyes like glowing coals and skin like a frozen rock and they probably eat naughty children whole."

"So… basically, racism," Darcy summed up when he fell silent for a moment. He looked at her thoughtfully before shrugging and nodding. It hadn't really occurred to him in that way, but he supposed she had a point.

"In any case, I don't suppose it would've upset me so terribly, to learn that I was adopted. But what did upset me, what still makes me want to rip my own skin off sometimes," he gritted out, realizing that he'd made a fist and slowly releasing it, "is that when I look in the mirror, I see something I was taught to hate. And I resent that Odin allowed me to grow up hearing these stories and never once contradicted them, gave me no window, no thread of hope that I might someday respect myself for what I was instead of reviling the beast he'd hidden from me.

"You would think!" he exclaimed, flinging his arms wide, "that if you were going to adopt a child from an enemy people that you might at least make an attempt to tone down your explicit hatred for that people. Mother was better at it, but she's not the sort who hates easily, so that's not saying much," he sighed moodily.

"I need a drink," Darcy decided after a moment of silence. "You need a drink? Let's drink to terrible parents." She stood up and headed into the kitchen to retrieve two cider beers from the refrigerator.

"To _horrible_ parents," Loki toasted as he popped the top off and inclined his bottle towards her. She returned the gesture, and they each took a long draught.

"I suppose what I resent most is that I tried so long and hard to earn Odin's approval, when I was never going to get it. And I think I could've understood that I was never going to get it, but nobody ever bothered to tell me, so I wasted years and years of pain and effort for nothing." Another long draught and the beer was gone. He was sorely tempted to smash the bottle against the floor just for the satisfaction of destroying something, but Darcy was still a little on edge, and he didn't want to find the last of the glass shards three days later with his foot. He settled for discarding the bottle on the table and retrieving another in five total steps and one deft twist of his fingers.

The cold glass against his palm made him remember Darcy's request from the train, and he looked at her critically. She was only about halfway through her first beer, and looking at him expectantly, assuming he had more to say.

"Do you still want to see?" he asked.

"Yeah," she nodded honestly, eyes widening. Using the chill from the bottle as a catalyst, he let the spell fall away from his hand, then switched the drink into the other to hold up his now blue appendage for Darcy to inspect.

"Whoa," she whispered, reaching out seemingly without thinking about it, and gently running her fingers along the ridges that decorated his skin. "Cool…"

"Really?" Loki demanded flatly, not sure if he should laugh or roll his eyes. "You see a _Frost_ Giant hand for the first time, and the first thing you say is ' _cool_?'"

"Hey," she grumbled, grabbing his hand between her fingers and maneuvering it out from her line of sight so she could glare at him, and he thought she probably said something else, something that roughly translated to "pun not intended," but he missed it as his mind caught up with how easily and casually she touched his blue skin. He'd gotten so caught up in thinking that this form was some foreign thing, like a disease or a parasite plaguing his body, that it never occurred to him that it was still just _him_ ; that anyone else would ever see it as just being him. His heart did a remarkably undignified stutter, and he found the rest of the spell lifting involuntarily as he lost focus.

Darcy stopped speaking as she saw the blue flesh creep up his neck and over his face, watched his blonde hair turn black again and lose its curl to cling closely to his head. Her eyes stared unblinkingly into his vivid crimson ones, and for a moment he felt the overwhelming urge to look away, close them, hide himself again. He hadn't intended to show her so much, but there was no going back now. He forced himself to remain stoic, not wanting her to see his discomfort.

Slowly, she raised a hand—still holding his with the other—and ran her fingers across the ridges on his cheek, her index sliding down the bridge of his nose to follow the trail.

"Incredible," she breathed.

"What." was his ineloquent response. He had anticipated a great many reactions, but not this one. How could he have foreseen the look of amazed wonder, in reaction to what he'd just shown her? He'd never imagined that anyone could look at a Jotun that way.

He'd never imagined that anyone could look at _him_ that way.

"Well, I'm human, and I think you look spectacular," she responded in total seriousness. "I get the whole internalized prejudice thing, I'm not trying to say I don't," she added quickly, withdrawing her hand to gesture, but not releasing his with her other one. "I just… _I_ think you look fantastic," she finished a little lamely.

"Alien-looking enough for you?" he joked lightly, trying not to let himself be overwhelmed. She nodded, looking pleased.

"Totally real alien," she agreed with a grin, and finally let go of his hand to retrieve her beer bottle and take another sip. He swallowed a few more gulps of his own, then exhaled, letting the spell come back up.

"So, does your junk look the same as ours, then?" she asked at the exact right moment for him to snort and get beer up his nose.

"I knew that was coming eventually," he grumbled as he wiped his face, shaking his head and glaring at her.

"What, it's a legitimate question!" she exclaimed innocently. "You have an eternal case of the blue—"

"So help me I will pour this over your head, human," he cut her off threateningly, but without any real malice. Darcy was laughing and making off-color jokes (quite literally, in this case) and after everything that had and hadn't happened that day, that meant that all was right with the world.

-0-

It would later transpire that Doug Lewis had moved in with an old friend in southern Indiana, as he had little money and less ability to get a job or housing immediately upon release from prison. With said friend's help, he'd eventually managed to get hired on a corn farm, and was working long hours for little money. Consequently, he would hardly be able to afford to make the six-hour trip into Chicago, much less the fourteen-hour drive to Colorado all for the sake of slashing Darcy's tires.

Loki wasn't entirely sure how Coulson knew that he'd want updates on the situation, but then again this was the agent whose job it was to keep tabs on the most dangerous criminal on the planet, so it wasn't that much of a surprised when the unassuming man wordlessly slid the relevant file across the table to him at their meeting that Saturday. Darcy had often made a big deal about the issues surrounding the American prison system and its aftermath, but it was clear that she was comforted in the knowledge that her abuser would be too hard pressed to survive to be able to do her harm. As days without incident went by and she thought about him less, her anxiety waned, her natural humor waxed and all was right with the world again.

For his part, Loki found himself walking on air as finals came and went and they packed for their trip to Chicago. Darcy's awed face when she saw his true form stayed with him like a prized possession a weary soldier might carry in their breast pocket. The memory of that moment buoyed him up at the most unexpected times. Of all the things he thought perhaps he might find on earth, never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that someone might accept him so completely, being what he was.

Even Rowena Ahlström noticed that his mood had noticeably improved, although he accredited some of it to her advice that day in her office. He had a little magic, he had a month off of school to catch up on Stephen King, he had two weeks off of work in the middle of the Holidays, and he had Darcy Lewis in the bedroom across the hall; something which he was coming to appreciate more every day.

Perhaps even a little too much.

But that was a problem for another day.


	19. Everyone

_He felt drunk - and not the good kind. His brain sloshed sickeningly around in his head as his body was moved by impulses he couldn't quite control. His limbs felt like unwieldy lumps of cement whenever he tried to move them himself, yet when they decided to move on their own, they were as fast and agile as he expected._

_He sat cross-legged, observing the controlled doctors as they busied themselves following orders he'd only half-understood as they left his own lips. But then another layer of sickening drowsiness overtook him - his mind pulled from him, spinning through space in moments, and then he was standing, ghost-like, before the throne._

_The Titan wasn't facing him, but his presence suffused the space, suffocating Loki even though his physical body was lightyears away._

_The Other spoke, and he answered, hardly hearing himself. The words probably even sounded natural to him. He only knew that they were questioning him, and that he was defending himself. He wondered dizzily why they would bother going through such a charade. Perhaps, he supposed, to remind him that they owned him._

" _You think you know pain?" The Other crooned, lightly running his filthy fingers across Loki's jawbone. His whole body convulsed in horror, memories of absolute agony running through him. "We will make you long for something_ sweet as pain…"

He came too with a ragged gasp, clawing at the hands gripping his shoulders and realizing embarrassingly late that they were Darcy's. She let him go, but remained within reach, looking worriedly down at him, hands hovering like she wanted to touch him again. Her glasses were off - he must've woken her up rather suddenly. Dazed, he rolled into a sitting position, legs hanging off the side of the bed, wondering if he'd been screaming or just tossing and turning.

"You good?" she breathed, backing off a bit so he'd have room to move. He tried to reply in the affirmative, but phantom pains were still shooting through his whole body, and he couldn't stop trembling. To his humiliation, his murmured "yeah" came out as a broken sob. He swallowed, once, twice, cleared his throat. It ached a little - perhaps he had screamed after all.

"You wanna talk about it?" Darcy asked quietly, sitting down on the end of the bed. He shook his head emphatically.

"No," he growled, then cleared his throat again. "But," he added, hating himself for his weakness, but fearing what his own mind would do if left to its own devices, "talk about something else, if you would." He glanced up at her briefly, then back down at his hands, his hair - which had been getting rather shaggy - forming a curtain between them.

Darcy scooted back so that she could sit against the wall, folding her legs to the side.

"When I was at school in Chicago," she began, "I had this awesome idea to take French. I was supposed to do a spoken language, I was bored of Spanish from high school, so I thought I'd shake it up a little. Anyhow, HUGE mistake, because the professor was this gigantic ass-wipe. Constantly embarrassing students, insanely high standards, and he was always late - about 13 minutes late, to be specific."

"So never quite enough for you all to be able to leave," Loki surmised when she paused for breath. She nodded.

"Never once a full 15 minutes, no. He'd come to campus, stick his stuff in his office, then go outside and smoke. Now, we had a rule against smoking on campus - you were supposed to get in your car and drive away before lighting up. But some of the professors had found this little blind alcove where nobody would catch them, and we all knew that was where he was.

"So one day, me and V decided to screw with him. While he was on a rant about the class's test scores, I stood up and yelled back, making a scene, while V stole his cigarettes and replaced them with some that we'd altered. We put those popper things in - but not at the end, where he'd notice them right away. We rolled 'em up in the middle, so he'd get part of the way through before they exploded.

"So after class, he goes out and has another smoke. We'd hidden this walkie talkie near the alcove, so that we could play a recording through it; V is amazing at computer stuff, so he made it sound like a little computer voice even though it was only me. I hid in a classroom where I could peek through the window, and when he got to the middle of the cigarette, I shined a laser-pointer right at the cigarette. It looked like a laser-beam actually shot the cigarette out of his hand, and then V started up the recording, about how smoking was prohibited on campus…" she broke off to snicker. "Yeah, he bolted so fast he probably qualified for some kind of race. Was never late again - I think we scared him off of smoking entirely."

Loki leaned against the wall, trying to imagine the professor's terror, the little explosion, Darcy crouching in a classroom and trying her damndest not to laugh too hard lest her hand shake. His breathing was beginning to even out, but the horror still sat heavily in his stomach.

"Then there was the time that me and all my brothers dressed up as Christmas Trees so we could 'come alive' and chase people down the hall," she continued, leaning in so that her shoulder pressed lightly against his. His heart slowed as she described different people's reactions, finished that story, then began to describe their twist on the 'classic sticky note prank.' He'd be thoroughly enjoying these stories if he was in his right mind, but tonight he clung to them like a person hanging off a precipice clings to a rope.

-0-

Darcy had been a little concerned about airport security, but Fury was good for his word; he'd said Loki was okay to fly, and it seemed that they meant it. They disembarked at O'Hare airport in Chicago without incident, and got on the familiar train into the heart of the city.

She'd noticed that lately Loki seemed to be having more nightmares; she'd always been an extremely light sleeper, so him moaning or mumbling in his sleep never failed to wake her. Last night though, it had sounded like he was sobbing in pain. She usually didn't just barge in on him - after all, she'd probably throttle him if he'd brought up the nightmares that she was sure he'd noticed her have - but he was so loud that she thought maybe he was awake; maybe he was physically hurt.

He'd panicked when she touched him, trying to brush her hands off and cringing away from her in abject terror before he got his wits about him and woke up properly. At his request, she'd monologued about whatever she could think of until he'd fallen asleep sitting up, but he'd still looked haunted and paler than usual in the morning.

They got off of the train at their station, familiar smells and sights enveloping Darcy with the comforting feeling of home.

"That one's ours, with the porch swing," she announced, pointing at the house as they approached. "The one next to it is Uncle Allen's—he's our landlord, slash on-call actual adult," she laughed.

"You're late!" someone shouted in a booming voice, and both pedestrians looked up to the second story window, out of which a young man was leaning with a mock-stern look on his face.

"A wizard is never late," Darcy shot back, a huge grin spreading across her face. "Nor is she early. She arrives precisely when she means to!"

The man grinned widely as well, hopping up onto the windowsill and from there onto the porch roof, then the railing, then the ground, in simple, efficient moves that would have made Sif proud.

"Luke, meet Zach," Darcy said as she hugged the tall brunette man, who reached behind her to shake Loki's hand jovially.

"We thought you were never coming!" another voice intruded from the front door; the man it belonged to was shorter than the first. "I almost panicked and ate your share of the empanadas!"

"Don't you dare, you sunnovabitch!" Darcy exclaimed, running past Zach at full tilt and bolting into the house. Zach snickered, gesturing for Loki to follow him inside as well.

As his eyes adjusted to the slightly dimmer lights, he picked out familiar faces from the pictures Darcy had shown him. The one who'd threatened to eat Darcy's food was Milo, Zach's boyfriend. The one guarding the loaded table like a sentry was Angel Ramirez, but everyone called him Junior—from the conversation, Loki picked up that the food had been a gift from his grandmother to welcome Darcy and V back home for the holidays.

V himself—the tallest of the group and the only one besides Darcy and Loki who was still wearing a coat—offered a hand and his name, which Loki took, after setting his bags near where Darcy had plopped hers near the entrance. For some reason, Darcy's brief confession that they'd once been lovers sat strangely in his stomach as he shook the Russian man's hand. He found himself evaluating him—his chiseled jawline covered in intentional stubble and dark, heavy eyebrows made for smoldering looks—and almost, dare he say it, trying to measure up to him.

Shaking that errant thought out of his head—where had it come from anyway? What did he care who his best friend used to sleep with?—he completed the handshake without breaking any of the attractive man's bones and introduced himself pleasantly as Luke Randle.

Jose—the mastermind behind the carnivorous Christmas Tree prank, if he recalled correctly—made himself known, and then properly introduced Darcy to his new girlfriend, Tessa. Jose had graduated with his bachelor's degree two years previously, but was staying on to complete his PhD. Darcy playfully warned Loki not to ask him about his thesis if he didn't want to listen to a five-hour monologue on a narrow topic no one else cared about.

"Yeah, she's got the patience of Buddha," commented CJ, an economics major who'd joined the family shortly before Darcy had transferred away.

"I promise he _sometimes_ talks about other things," Tessa responded with a laugh, which was shared by everyone in the room.

Kinsey, a tattoo artist who'd never actually attended college according to Darcy's description, chose that moment to descend the stairs, hair damp and smelling of shower gel, and fling herself into Darcy's waiting arms.

"Finally!" she grumbled, "I thought you'd never get home." Without pausing or letting go of Darcy she looked over her sister's shoulder and reached back to shake Loki's hand. "You must be the hot foreign roommate she was telling us about."

"Oh, she said I was hot?" Loki laughed, "this is news."

"Well she also thought that _capullo_ Jeff was hot at some point so I wouldn't exactly trust her judgement," Junior responded dryly. Darcy casually gave him the finger.

"Okay, so maybe I inferred you were hot—but you did make Scumbag-Jeff's life suck, so you're okay in my book," Kinsey responded brightly, finally releasing Darcy. "Speaking of taste in men, you finally get to meet Mitch tonight when he gets off work!" she exclaimed excitedly, and from there the conversation dissolved into discussions of everyone's romantic lives in the last couple of years, and what to have for dinner once the empanadas ran out.

As day wore into night, Mitch arrived home to be introduced, as well as their last housemate Bobby, whose deep bass voice and long mane of dreadlocks made him look like a younger, hotter version of Heimdall. The last to arrive was Uncle Allen himself, to have a beer and invite the visiting trio to move their stuff next door.

"No chance you're all going to fit in here overnight; the place'd burst at the seams," he laughed. "You guys'll have to double up, but I got a spare bedroom and a pull-out couch."

To Loki's quickly repressed disgust, this sleeping arrangement meant that he had to share the spare bedroom with V himself, while Darcy got the pull-out couch in Allen's office. As he tucked himself into one of the twin beds, he reminded himself for the umpteenth time that night that there was absolutely no reason for him to dislike Valery Pavlov. He and Darcy had parted on amicable terms, so he didn't deserve to be placed in the Mop-Haired-Maggot's category.

And there was no other reason for him to dislike the man, no other reason at all. Not one.

He almost believed himself by the time he drifted off. Denial was one powerful thing.

-0-

" _He is ready."_

_The dull spike of loathing Loki felt at the voice barely even registered through the all-consuming waves of pain. He felt himself moving—or was he being moved—and something heavy was placed into his hands. Heavy with weight, and heavy with power, and heavy with sadness, but that didn't make a bit of sense, and he couldn't think straight enough to correct it._

_-0-_

" _Sir, please put down the spear."_

_Slowly, dreamlike, he glanced at his hand - eyes taking in the source of the weight which rested there. It felt sad. Why did it feel sad? He felt nothing as he shot a blast of power at the puny mortal who dared give him an order._

_-0-_

" _Look to your elder, people," Loki said, but his voice shook as he took aim. Though not a physical blow, the man's words had shaken him, made him return to himself for a moment. It was such a little thing, but it felt like the man was staring straight through him, locking eyes with Thanos himself as he refused to bend his knee. All too soon the feeling passed, and the relief that he might have had when Captain America dropped from the sky and saved the man's life was entirely lost on his magically-drugged brain._

_-0-_

_When lightning cracked all around the plane, panic and hope warred within him; he feared what his not-brother might do to him for this great of a transgression, but still somewhere deep down hoped to be truly caught, and stopped—even killed, so long as he was safe from the retribution he would suffer should he fail._

_But fear won out, and must have showed on his face. Though he said aloud that he wasn't overly fond of that which followed lightning, in truth the terrible realization had unfolded within him that Thor's interference was a signing of his brother's death warrant… But if he tried to save him…_

_When he was pulled from the machine, the shudder of fear that wracked his whole body had nothing to do with the strong arms encircling him._

Loki awoke suddenly and silently, grateful that he hadn't cried out in a stranger's home. Rubbing a hand across his face in resignation, he rolled onto his side. It was only going to get worse from here, he knew. Ever since he'd showed Darcy his true form—ever since he'd acknowledged that the blue skin and red eyes were his true form—the memories had been returning thick and fast. Before, it was as if he'd convinced himself that everything that had happened to him was actually happening to someone else; another entity, hostile and blue and inhabiting his body. In this manner, he'd sealed away the frightening, painful memories, and gotten on with his life.

But now that he could admit to himself that _that_ had been _him_ …

"Everything all right over there?" V whispered, and Loki's eyes snapped to his deep brown ones. The other man was looking over at him in sleepy concern, his phone lying face down on his blanketed chest—he'd already been awake then; Loki's senses needed retraining if he hadn't noticed.

"Fine," he responded quietly. "I always have odd dreams when I drink beer before going to bed."

"Hm," V hummed, clearly unconvinced. "Don't tell me if you don't want to," he allowed. "It's your business. But I've seen enough people trying to crush their demons alone to know what it looks like in the eyes."

"You're quite clever, I suppose," Loki murmured dryly, rolling over the other way to settle back in for hopefully a dream-free night.

"What can I say," he replied with a little laugh. "Spend enough time around Darcy Lewis and she starts to rub off on you.

I used to think it was like magic, you know?" he added, and Loki glanced over his shoulder to make eye-contact with him again. "How she always knew when someone was having a hard time; how the most broken people would flock to her. But she told me her secret recently."

"And what's that?" Loki asked, both surprised and not surprised that adopting broken people was in fact a habit with his friend.

"It's that really, everyone's a little broken," V explained with a shrug. "You just start by accepting that, and eventually, people are honest with you. And eventually, they start to heal."

"Honesty was never my forte," Loki admitted with the ghost of a laugh.

"Well, she's a good person to start with, if you ask me," V told him, before rolling over himself so that his back was to the god.

'Well I already knew _that_ ,' Loki thought as he drifted off, with equal parts smugness and resentment.


	20. Joy

"I had no idea drinking could be this much work," Bobby muttered as he carefully poured a second layer of green vodka-jello over the existing layers of red, green and more red.

"It'll be worth it though!" Mitch exclaimed sealing little plastic lids over the cups and carefully stacking them on a tray that Loki was holding.

"I've visited a lot of places and drank quite a variety of alcohols," Loki commented as he held his hands steady, carrying the tray to the refrigerator and retrieving another empty one, "but I can't say I've ever _eaten_ liquor, so this will be a new experience."

"It's tradition, guys!" Milo lauged from where he was furiously beating a bowl full of egg yolks while Darcy stood by him, slowly spooning in sugar.

"Alpha-Sigma-Sigma Christmas," Junior added, "means holiday-themed jello shots, eggnog, Pozole and the Battle of the Gingerbread Fortress."

"How go the defenses, captain CJ?" Darcy called over her shoulder. At the kitchen table, CJ sat, hair pulled back by one of their collection of beanies (which rivaled even Darcy's, something Loki hadn't thought possible) carefully gluing panels of gingerbread together with gooey frosting. The long, pointed pentagonal shape was actually starting to resemble the picture of an Imperial Star Destroyer that CJ had taped to an empty milk jug for reference.

"It's gonna beat the hell out of last year's Isengard for sure!" CJ promised, waggling their dark eyebrows for emphasis. "And the offense?"

"Comin' along, comin' along," Zach muttered as he put the finishing touches on his fifth candy-covered X-wing. Each year, according to CJ's excited description that morning, they'd build a fortress and a fleet, then fight (read: throw candy around) until one gingerbread mass was judged more broken than the other. All combatants would then feast on the sugar-coated remains.

In the week he'd been staying with them, Loki never ceased to be amazed at not only the level of inside jokes and traditions these people had, but also at their immediate willingness to invite new people into said jokes and traditions. He'd never once felt like they were talking over his head or forgetting about him, and although it did get a little tiring to constantly have people taking a moment to explain jokes and references, it did do a brilliant job of distracting him from his constant underlying state of fear.

He was actually starting to fall into a routine with his nightmares, when he awoke at two, four and seven in the morning (and then around ten, if I didn't give up on sleep at seven and stick his head into a book until the sun came up). He'd gotten better about not making any sound—in fact he suspected that the constant adrenaline rush was increasing his tiny magic reserves—so V had only caught him one other time when the other man happened to be awake. He'd passed it off as a sudden need for the toilet, and the Russian hadn't pried.

During the day, Darcy and her family kept him busy, and he'd thrown himself into every activity, every movie, every game of D&D or Final Fantasy with gusto. He knew Darcy was a little surprised by it, because he tended to be introverted and had certainly packed enough books to entertain him on his own for several hours a day, but she didn't comment on it. She probably knew, on some level, what was going on…

"Back in Mother Russia, we just did shots of Vodka," Darcy was commenting in a passable imitation of V's accent. "We didn't feel the need to add jello to it." Everyone snickered, while V protested that he'd said that years ago, and wasn't that ever going to die?

"Never; I'll learn necromancy just to resurrect it every Christmas," Darcy assured him as she added rum to the eggnog mix and took over the stirring so Milo could take a break.

Loki had spent a lot of time feeling hurt when he looked at other people's close-knit families, because it just reminded him that that was something he'd never have—a fact of which he'd became more and more starkly aware in the last few years. But this patchwork little group was a different kind of close, and a different kind of beautiful, and for the first time since he was a kid, he thought that maybe he could belong with someone.

Of course, all that lovely thought did was remind him of the other type of belonging with someone, and the way that he'd started seeing Darcy differently. The way that the dimples in her cheeks and the corner of her mouth had developed some sort of magnetic pull on his eyes, and the way her blunt yet infectious friendliness drew in everyone around her—and him most of all.

It didn't help that everything in that house was done at close quarters when the whole family were squeezed into one kitchen or living room—as they often were. This meant that on many, many occasions, she'd be standing close enough to him that he could feel her body heat, or even leaning against him as they squeezed five people onto a three-person couch.

"Okay, that's the last of it," Bobby announced as he rinsed out the measuring cup he'd been using to portion out the Jello and stuck it in the dishwasher. Loki carefully refrigerated the last stack of little cups, then lent CJ a hand finishing the Star Destroyer.

Several hours later when the eggnog had chilled and the Jello had gelled and the candy glue had dried and the Pozole had finished slow-cooking, Allen arrived with his sister and nephew, and the whole mess of people crowded around the table—elongated by the addition of several folding tables—for a traditional Alpha-Sigma-Sigma Christmas.

Team Empire destroyed team Rebellion (it helped that Loki was a better shot than anyone had known until he started flicking skittles with the skill of an expert) and the fighters stuffed every inch of themselves that wasn't already full of dinner with gingerbread. The fancy drinks were, in fact, worth the effort to make them, and by the time Allen's family had to bow out to put his nephew to bed, Loki thought he might actually have a light buzz.

Afterwards, with the warmth of alcohol and celebration running through their veins, most of the remaining group piled into Bobby's pick-up truck, and Jose—the only sober person in attendance—drove them through the nearly-empty streets of pre-dawn Chicago. The December air was frigid, but it felt oddly good as it stung against the passengers' skin, after the nearly suffocating warmth of the house. Milo and Zack rode in the cab, and Bobby, CJ, Junior, V, Tessa, Loki and Darcy all crowded into the truck bed, wrapped in coats and muffled in the scruffy blankets that Bobby stored under the seats for emergencies—such as picnics or unexpected naps under the stars.

Mitch and Kinsey had opted to stay back at the house, but even without the full group, seven people in the back of one truck was—like everything at Alpha house—a crowded affair. Loki's arm wrapped around Darcy's shoulders quite naturally, and when hers looped around his waist in return, no space was left between them, and it was like they'd been fitting together like this for a lifetime. He'd never imagined he'd be so effortlessly comfortable touching someone—particularly as he recalled his stay in Thanos's dungeons. But now, it was very strange to remember a time—only a week ago!—when they'd sat two feet apart to watch a movie.

Jose pulled into the parking lot of a grade school—empty and silent at four in the morning on Christmas day, and with a yell for everyone to hang on to something, he started driving around in tight circles and figure-eights, turning the little joyride into a mock-roller coaster. Screams of fear and glee mingled from the passengers, and Darcy's mittened hand gripped the side of the truck tightly. Loki kept his arm around her, grabbing the metal side with his free hand as well. Darcy was whooping and laughing, and her cheeks were raised in that big, happy smile that she always insisted didn't look good on camera.

Loki's eyes were drawn to those round cheeks again, and again he thought that he should like to kiss them. Being here with her, with them, in the ordinary-ness of Midgard, breathing the cold air of a lakeside city in winter, riding in a rickety truck in a fragile human form made the trickster god feel freer than he could ever remember feeling in his thousand-plus years of existence. It was because no one here wanted or expected or demanded anything from him besides his mere presence, and the quality of just being himself.

And oh, how he wanted to kiss those smiling cheeks! Darcy squealed as she was flung into him, and then laughed breathlessly as Jose hit the brakes and brought the mad ride to a screeching halt. The truck lurched once more as he put it in park, and then all was still, except for the frazzled, buzzed passengers yelling and applauding and demanding or protesting another round, depending on individual disposition and state of sobriety.

Maybe it was the alcohol doing his thinking for him, he mused, as Darcy yelled "again!" and the shape of her face changed subtly, from grinning to speaking to laughing and back to grinning. Maybe tomorrow he could _say_ that he had been tipsier than he realized. Maybe he _was_. He wanted to kiss that face.

"Look!" Darcy exclaimed suddenly, pointing to the dark sky. Nine sets of eyes followed her red mitten heavenwards.

"Dude, it's snowing!" CJ exclaimed as the thick white flakes began to drift into their line of sight. "No _way_ —the first snow of the year was _actually_ on Christmas Eve. How does that even happen?"

Before anyone could answer the rhetorical question, Darcy had scrambled to her feet. Stepping out of her boots, she proceeded to shed her coat, sweater, scarf, gloves and socks—most of which articles fell onto Loki's lap and head, due to his proximity.

"What are you doing?" He demanded in confusion, struggling to free himself from the little avalanche of cloth. Darcy—now clad only in her tee-shirt and jeans—hopped over the side of the truck bed and landed silently on the black pavement.

"Geez that's cold," she exclaimed, jumping a little as soon as she landed.

"What the hell?" V called after her as she ran a few paces away from the truck.

"I'm gonna try and catch one on my tongue," she responded, as if it were completely obvious and they were being rather dense not figuring it out.

"Why'd you get half naked to do it?" Bobby shot back, holding up one of her discarded gloves.

"If you do this right away in the season, you won't be cold for the rest of the winter," Darcy informed them, thumbs shoved into her pockets.

"You made that up," Junior accused. She grinned widely.

"Yeah, I totally did," she admitted, and then flung her arms wide and spun around in a circle. "But it might work anyway! C'mon, try it!"

"You're crazy-pants!" Bobby yelled, but Zack had already opened the passenger door and hopped out, shrugging out of his coat.

"Just come run around the parking lot once," he called to Milo as he got out of the rest of his outer clothes and began to walk backwards towards Darcy, eyes still on the others in the truck. "Just to say we did it." His boyfriend shook his head, but proceeded to strip off his coat and hat.

"Well," Jose said, turning off the ignition, "I guess that's as good a reason to do anything as any…"

"You're all gonna get eaten by the abominable snow-monster," Bobby warned, causing general laughter and no actual concern.

"Luke, V, c'mon!" Milo yelled, already shivering. "Come be young and wild with us!"

"Join the dark side—we have ice cream!" Darcy added, bringing on another round of laughter.

"I will not strip," Valery said, pulling out his phone. "I will, however, take video."

"Close enough for government work," Zack allowed with a shrug.

"Luke?" Darcy asked, eyes turning to Loki. It was the damnedest thing, then. The Jotun had been about to make some excuse to remain with the semi-responsibles, motivated by an intense desire to prevent his skin turning blue from contact with the cold. But his eyes were drawn to Darcy's hopeful smile—and… those… damnably… cute… cheeks. As if he was caught in a magnetic field, he stood up, jumped down, and began unbuttoning his coat. Milo had kept his boots; as long as Loki did the same and thereby didn't come into contact with any actual freezing object, he figured he'd be fine.

Darcy whooped happily, and while the boys got ready, she threw her head back, stuck out her tongue, and teetered around backwards, trying futilely to catch a snowflake.

"We doing this or what?" Junior asked loudly, having taken Loki's example and retained his boots.

"Epic fail," Darcy announced, straightening up and closing her mouth. "Okay everyone! On your marks! Get set! Chaaaaarge!" And they were off, dashing around the parking lot, snow flurrying around their bare heads, like complete nutters. Darcy had had a head start, but the guys' longer legs soon overtook her, and Zack—who was on the track team back in high school—and Junior—who jogged in the mornings—soon peeled away from the group and raced one-on-one. Loki, with his speed and lanky frame, could have easily beaten them, but the magnetic effects of Darcy's now very red cheeks acted upon him again, and he slowed down to keep pace with her.

"Only you would think this was a good idea," he informed her without real venom.

"I beg to differ," she shot back, gesturing widely at the other runners. Loki rolled his eyes and half shrugged, half nodded, allowing that. The air was frigid on his bare skin, but it felt good, either because of his heritage, or because it counteracted the intoxication and exercise. The contrast was remarkably invigorating. But although he'd conceded Darcy's point, he still had the words "only you" echoing through his head.

Junior outran Zack by a tiny margin, although, since they hadn't started out racing, and hadn't had an endpoint in mind, it hardly mattered, and both laughed and fist-bumped. The rest of the group arrived back at the parked truck and stood there, panting and blowing and rubbing their arms and legs.

"That actually felt kinda' good," Milo admitted. "And you're right, Darce—I _don't_ feel cold anymore."

"Tol'ja!" She crowed, pounding her fist in the air. "V, you still rolling?"

"Yup," Valery responded, pointing the camera of his phone in her direction.

"I'm gonna go do the monkey bars!" she yelled, running in the direction of the playground.

"Why?" Bobby exclaimed, although he was laughing along with everybody else.

"Because I can!" Darcy called over her shoulder, to general nods and shrugs. The other runners pulled boots and coats and gloves back on haphazardly and then filed across the stiff, frozen grass to watch Darcy do the monkey bars at a grade-school play-park in the dead of winter with no coat or shoes. Loki put his alacrity to good use, dressing rapidly and retrieving Darcy's boots and coat from the truck bed, and still arriving at the edge of the mulch before the others. Darcy had already climbed up on one platform, and was gripping the first bar experimentally.

"Time to watch Darcy fall on her ass," Valery announced to the camera. Several voices hushed him, but others laughed in agreement.

Darcy swung between the bars with ease, despite the coating of ice and the distraction of her own chattering teeth. She landed on the opposite platform, took a bow, and then hopped off.

Then she slipped and fell backwards, bashing her head against the metal platform with an echoing "clang!"


	21. Merry Christmas

For an instant, Loki felt like his veins had been shredded open, and then and frozen in place, by countless shards of ice. Then panic flooded through him like fire, and he leapt forward.

"Shit!"

"Whoa, ouch!"

"Darcy! Oh my—"

"Oh, shit!"

The exclamations of the onlookers filled the night air as they all scrambled towards their friend, converging on her where she lay, so unnaturally still, eyes closed, blood dribbling through her long brown hair. Loki reached her side first, and gingerly lifted her head and shoulders, supporting her neck. She had a pulse, and her neck wasn't broken. That was a good start. But her head was bleeding badly, and she was unconscious.

"We gotta get her to the ER!" Milo shouted, and Jose tore off back to the truck to start it up. Loki picked Darcy up as gently and carefully as he could manage, and climbed with her into the cab of the truck. Everyone else piled into the back, and Jose was driving towards the closest hospital as quickly as he dared with so many exposed passengers and an injured girl. Loki held her in his lap, cradling her gently, supporting her injured head and fragile neck, and—at Milo's instruction—keeping pressure on the wound with her scarf. When they arrived at the hospital and piled out of the truck, Loki still carrying Darcy, and entered the ER door in a mob.

Hospital employees strapped Darcy—now stirring a little and moaning—to a gurney, and put her neck in a brace. The crowd wasn't allowed in past the waiting room, but Loki and Valery followed the nurses as they wheeled their patient into an operating room, V because he was explaining what had happened and showing his video clip and Loki because one look at his face would tell any observer that he wasn't leaving her side tonight.

The next hour blurred by in a tense haze of panic. Every action the doctors took seemed to small, too slow, and Loki found himself alternately cursing Midgardian medical practice to the depths of Hel and taking back his thoughts with something like prayer, hoping, wishing, begging that whatever they were doing would be enough. A little thing like this would have been a minor bruise on Sif or Fandral, but when one of the nurses had watched Valery's video, she'd chided them, saying that someone could have died.

Someone could have died. Darcy could have died, from such a petty thing. If she'd hit wrong, she could have broken her neck. She could have cracked her skull, instead of receiving a mere concussion, which itself seemed a great enough hurt for a mortal. He'd always been thinking of the Captain or Black Widow or Barton when he calculated what a human could withstand. It was only now that he realized what the difference was between "human" and "super-human."

And Darcy had spent her childhood in and out of hospitals because her father had beaten her…

Anger was easier than fear. Loki's fists clenched as he thought of the piece of trash that had the nerve to call himself Darcy's father. He wanted _so badly_ to kill him… It took a few minutes to sort out his thoughts, remember that Doug Lewis had nothing to do with today's events, accept the fact that he was looking for someone to blame, and circle back to wondering if Darcy would be okay.

They had brought her around immediately, and asked her simple questions—her name, her age, what day it was—to test her lucidity. They'd hooked her up to an IV drip of something, and one of the nurses had kept up a constant stream of mundane chatter while they probed her injury and stitched her head shut. Every few sentences, she'd ask a simple question—did she like snow? What was she planning for Christmas? Did her family live nearby? Did she open gifts yet?—intended, Valery explained quietly, to keep her awake and aware, because apparently concussion victims weren't supposed to sleep for several hours after they were injured.

There was one moment of panic when the nurse pointed to the corner where he and V leaned against the wall, and asked Darcy what their names were.

"Valery… Pavlov?" she responded with a hint of a smile in V's direction when she said his given name, and then a questioning look with his surname. It was so rare for anyone to call him even by his hated first name that it was unsurprising that she'd take a moment to remember his last. V rolled his eyes and nodded, and then Darcy's eyes flickered to Loki's face. His heart stammered a beat. They'd lived together half a year now, and mostly saw one another at home—where she _always_ called him Loki. Over the last week, she'd referred to him by his alias more than she had all together in the rest of the time they'd known each other.

Now came the _real_ test of how aware she was.

"Luke," she whispered after a slight pause, and he shot her a tiny encouraging smile. "Luke…" her eyes narrowed and drifted to one side, the way they always did when she was thinking hard about something. Two seconds passed.

"Randle!" She exclaimed suddenly, snapping her fingers. Relief flooded over him like someone had turned on a hose very suddenly on top of his head. The nurses didn't appear to think anything was awry, since she was _supposed_ to be a little loopy, and hadn't said anything about, well, an _intergalactic_ _terrorist_ or anything.

Once her head was stitched up and bandaged, she was moved into a regular hospital room, and Loki and V were left alone with her with strict instructions not to let her fall asleep until at least ten or eleven am. Zack and Junior turned up a few minutes later, explaining in a low voice that Jose had driven the others back to the house to sober up once they knew Darcy's life wasn't in danger, since Milo, Bobby, Tessa and CJ were all technically underage, and no one really wanted to get arrested on Christmas.

"Of all the times for this to happen," Darcy complained, leaning against her pillows in a futile attempt to get comfortable in the hospital bed. They'd raised the back up so that it was more like a chair with a footrest than a bed, and someone had turned on the TV, so that the live-action version of The Grinch was playing in the background. "Christmas freakin' day, stuck in the hospital."

"Could be worse," Junior reminded her. "Christmas day in a morgue would really suck."

"Yeah, yeah," she scoffed. "It takes more than a bump on the head to write _me_ off."

But she was mortal, Loki thought with a pang as she said that and the others laughed and nodded. So a mere bump on the head _could_ be enough to end her. He'd kept coming back to that all morning, and fear still thrilled through his stomach every time the thought echoed back to him. This had been such a little accident, but it could have been enough.

So _this_ was what she meant back then, he realized suddenly, while somewhere near him Valery was uploading the wipeout video to Darcy's Facebook page. The day they'd met, when she'd said he might have a concussion, and had advised him not to sleep. She'd legitimately been trying to save his life, albeit in her own oddball Darcy way. He should have been more grateful for the gesture…

"Luke, help me find your Facebook so I can tag you!" Valery was saying, and Loki's eyes focused back on the present.

"I don't have one," he admitted with a small smile and a shrug. "Social media never really interested me—the only people I really talk to are people I see regularly, so what's the point?" He of course left out that he'd created a fake account in order to stalk Jeff the maggot, but technically it was true that he'd never had one with his name on it.

"How are we supposed to keep up with you when you go back to Colorado?" Junior demanded. "You should make one, even if it's just for us!"

"C'mon," Darcy said, beckoning him over to the bed. "I'll walk you through making one." She was smiling widely again. Those damn cheeks! He got up and followed the magnetism across the little room, and sat down next to her, scooting in close to have enough room to sit, and wrapping his arm around her shoulders out of habit. She leaned into him as he pulled out his phone.

"Awwww, how cuuuuute," Junior teased. A month ago, Loki would have protested, said something about how they weren't romantically involved, withdrawn his arm, and probably been stiff and formal and awkward for the rest of the day. But it wasn't a month ago, and he was well enough versed in Midgardian customs to flip Junior off and tell him to shut up, earning a laugh from Valery and another smile from Darcy.

"Start by downloading the app," Darcy instructed him, touching the app store icon and then removing her hand while he typed in the name.

"You'll need to update your _relationship status_ …" Junior muttered with a wink.

"You don't have to answer all the personal questions immediately," Darcy contradicted smoothly, with a glare at Junior. "You can go back and edit your profile later. Okay, use your junk mail for your login—you'll get all kinds of useless notifications cluttering up your inbox…"

Half an hour later, Luke Randle from New York, male, age 25, single, had selected a profile picture—a crop of himself out of the group photo they'd all taken back at the house—and added a banner photo that Valery found for him online of a gigantic deluxe banana split. Poor Luke Randle, however, still hadn't gotten to kiss Darcy's cheek, despite the fact that the enticing object was within eight inches of his mouth the way they were sitting. Darcy friended him and showed him how to accept the request, and then he searched the Alpha guys, and with help from Darcy on name-spelling and profile-icon-recognition, he found and friend-requested them all. He also looked up Tessa, who was online and messaged him immediately, congratulating him on entering the 21st Century.

Although Darcy was still in the hospital and the alcohol was wearing off and he was still facing a lifetime on Midgard, the glow from last night was back, nesting inside his chest. Friends… Friends who weren't Thor's friends just putting up with him because he was Thor's brother. Certainly, they were Darcy's friends first, but Zack and Milo had met through Mitch, and that didn't make them any less close to each other.

Then Darcy's phone went off with an actual phone call.

"Jane! Merry Christmas!" she said, after swiping her finger across the "answer" button. Then she winced and held the phone away from her ear. Everyone could hear why.

"DARCY, OMYGOD ARE YOU OKAY? I JUST SAW WHAT HAPPENED ON FACEBOOK!"

"Well, that backfired slightly," V admitted quietly. Loki took the phone from Darcy's fingers while she massaged her temples.

"Jane," he said levelly into the speaker, "if you did indeed see the video, then you should know that Darcy is in the hospital with a concussion. As such, it might be prudent behavior for you to _keep your voice down_ ; I hear concussed individuals often suffer from sensory issues and migraines." He was trying extremely hard not to snarl the words. Jane's response was in a low, angry hiss.

"If you had ANYTHING to do with that, I SWEAR TO—"

"Merry damn Christmas to you too," he snapped. "I'm giving Darcy the phone—don't damage her hearing." Without waiting for Jane to say anything else, he handed Darcy her phone back.

"Who's that?" Junior stage-whispered.

"Darcy's old boss," Loki responded quietly. "And my brother's girlfriend."

"You're not very nice to your brother's girlfriend," V commented.

"She _really_ doesn't like me," Loki said flatly. "It's sort of a mutual thing." Valery shrugged.

"No, we were just being drunk and stupid," Darcy was assuring Jane with that magnetic grin. "They took me to the ER and I just have to stay here for observation all day in case I fall asleep and stop breathing or something. Nah, they pumped me full of drugs—I'm a little achy and can't look directly at the lights, but other than that I'm cool. Yeah, but I was up all night, and now they won't let me sleep until the middle of the morning. Some Christmas… Bah humbug!"

"Luckily Santa and his elves are here to the rescue!" CJ announced, entering the room at that moment with their arms full of McDonald's bags, and followed by the rest of Alpha-Sigma-Sigma, armed with packages of cheap tinsel, Allan's stereo, and Darcy's favorite pajamas.

"The party has arrived, I gotta go," Darcy said quickly. "Tell everyone Merry Christmas!" Before Jane could protest, Darcy hung up and turned her attention to the newcomers.

"Non-hospital food, PJ's and music… you guys are angels, you know that?"

They closed the door and turned on the stereo—quietly enough not to get reprimanded, but loud enough to drown out the incessant hospital beeping noises. McDonald's breakfasts were distributed, and Darcy put on the pajamas while Zack and Loki—the tallest among them—tacked decorations haphazardly onto the walls. Kinsey turned off the TV and then emptied a bag full of board games, to general laughter. And so it was, that on Christmas morning, a group of young adults played Candyland and Monopoly in a hospital room, eating greasy contraband and listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's finest Christmas hits.

**Author's Note:**

> Okey doke! This is how far I got on fanfiction.net. From here on out we're all waiting on me to update. Next semester (beginning tomorrow) my schedule is as follows: Monday-Thursday, 7am-8pm, Friday 7am-4pm, Saturday 8am-4pm, plus an hour commute each way, and beginning grad school (online). So one of two things is going to happen.
> 
> Either, having absolutely no downtime, I will nave no time to write and the story will return to hiatus.
> 
> Or, having absolutely no downtime, my brain will do that thing it did in college when I had projects due and work to get to and I'll be inspired to write every single day.
> 
> We'll find out in the next couple of weeks which one it'll be! Hope to see you all again soon!


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